Black Hole
by ProWriter11
Summary: Grissom, physically fit, deliriously happy and newly married, finds out the hard way that good health can kill you. Definitely GSR, but hopefully no fluff. Rating probably should be MA. No spoilers but references to Season 8.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: **Hello, again. I know this has been a while in coming. In fact, it wasn't something I even planned to do. Given my work commitments and the volume crossing my desk these days, I had pretty much decided to abandon fan fiction as a fun exercise that didn't pay any bills. But enough people asked for another story that I decided to give it a go. I had to do it during little seams in my schedule. I just hope it doesn't read that way. J

**xxxxxxx**

**Chapter One**

God, it was hot!

The rider pulled one of the plastic water bottles off the titanium frame of his new mountain bike. He pulled up the stopper with his teeth and tipped his head back to let liquid run down his throat. It was horrible. About the temperature of bathwater and tinged with a taste of the plastic in which it had spent the last five hours. The image of a cold beer crossed his mind, and he thought he might be capable of committing murder right now to get his hands on one.

He had no idea what possessed him to drive all the way down to Pyramid Canyon for his long ride of the week. He remembered he thought it would be pleasant to see the Colorado River where it widened out above Davis Dam, and maybe ride across the dam and into Arizona, his first-ever interstate bike ride. He hadn't checked the weather, which was a ridiculous mistake. It was late May. The heat shouldn't have been unbearable. But the thermometer back at the rest stop said it was 108 degrees in the shade, a temperature more indicative of a heat wave in July. It had been 66 when he left his house at 7 a.m. But during the two-hour drive deep into the southern tip of Nevada, and then on the outbound leg of his ride over a very challenging route, the thermometer had soared. He eased back on his speed. His thighs were beyond the burn. He was dripping wet, even in the ten percent humidity. Perspiration streaked the shatter-proof lenses of the dark goggles he wore to protect his eyes from blowing sand and flying pebbles. And he felt slightly light-headed. Planning a 40-mile ride in this weather might have been a touch ambitious. He was in the best shape of his life, but Lance Armstrong he wasn't.

He hated admitting defeat, but it was the Memorial Day weekend, which hadn't occurred to him, and the solitude he sought for the ride just wasn't happening. He and his bicycle shared the road with too much traffic and too much sun. It wasn't yet noon, so it was only going to get hotter. Common sense prevailed. Reluctantly, Gil Grissom turned the bike around and headed back toward the cove where he'd parked his Tahoe. The return would be about 14 miles, he figured from his trip odometer. He would take it more slowly than the ride out. The last thing he wanted was to die of heat stroke.

**xxxxxx**

Sara Sidle returned home from the Crime Lab a few hours earlier than she had expected. Sara didn't work there any more, not since her ordeal in the desert and her hiatus to San Francisco. She now held the position of Assistant Professor of Forensic Sciences at the University of Nevada Las Vegas and was working on her PhD in forensic medicine. But when needed she consulted at the lab, always happy to be back among her old friends and colleagues. She had been working a particularly dumbfounding rape/murder case with Nick Stokes and had found the blood evidence that seemed to have broken things open. Nick and Jim Brass were conducting the suspect interviews when she left the lab to come home. She tossed her car keys on the kitchen counter and pulled a bottle of water out of the refrigerator. She couldn't believe how hot it was outside for this early in the year.

She hoped to find Grissom at home waiting to take a shower with her. Not only did they revel in their shower sex, Sara loved the warm-up exercises too. Grissom would walk in the door, his soggy Castelli cycling jersey and shorts adhering tightly to his frame and emphasizing the growing bulge below his abdomen where his anticipation dwelled. She found the look of his newly toned body and his sweaty man-odor absolutely intoxicating. The boyish shit-eating grin that split his face below eyes radiating with desire only torqued up his appeal. It took no effort on her part to take full advantage of his situation.

It always started with a deep, passionate kiss to which she would add an ever-changing variety of sexual teases: a new touch, a new sound, a new pressure, a new look in her eyes, a combination, all of the above. As his anticipation grew, so did the bulge, until Grissom could no longer tolerate the pressure of confinement within his own shorts and begged to be allowed to strip. He would trail Sara into their bathroom then, standing close behind her. She would always reach back and grab him gently, massaging him softly until she coaxed a tortured groan from his throat. Then she would turn on the shower. While it ran from cold to hot, she would turn to face Grissom, drop to her knees, slide the shorts and jock strap down and release him. Then, using her hands and her mouth, she would keep him interested until the shower was ready. Once they stepped inside, he returned her favors and then some.

On these occasions, they never failed to run through the house's supply of hot water.

Sara had been particularly looking forward to their game this morning, so she was a little disappointed to find the house empty and a note on the kitchen counter:

"Gone riding. I might be a little later than usual. Make sure the shower's working. Love you. G."

Oh well, the game would be there when he got home.

Sara hoped he remembered they had dinner plans with friends from UNLV, though she wasn't really worried. Grissom returned from these rides fully energized for hours. He had started taking his physical conditioning seriously the previous October. He told Sara it was because he didn't want to get old on his young wife. That realization came to him the same day his doctor put him on blood-pressure medication to combat the effects of stress at work. Whatever the real reason, he was at their gym three times a week doing cardio and weights. A spinning class had launched him into his biking craze. He started with a used bike, not willing to invest a lot of money until he was sure he liked it. But he loved it. And Sara convinced him if he was going to take the sport seriously, he should invest in a bike that was custom-made to match him perfectly. He had grumbled about paying almost 9,000 for a top model made with a Lynskey titanium frame, but she convinced him to make the investment.

"What's your health and happiness worth?" she said.

He had wrapped his arms around her, kissed her and replied, "I'll spend the money for my health. All I need for happiness is you."

It had been that way in the year since she returned from San Francisco. He moved to supervise the day shift. Nick was supervising swing and Catherine took over graveyard. Greg had become a CSI 3 in Denver, Warrick was gone and even the contingent of lab rats had evolved.

Sara and Grissom had gotten married, finally, about three months after she came back to Las Vegas. They had needed some time to rebuild their relationship and get totally comfortable with one another again. If anything, their unanticipated time apart brought them closer together. Sara had come to terms with her past, more or less, and thrived in her new academic environment. She saw her old friends enough to remain close and built a community of new friends, who became Grissom's friends as well. He had begun thinking about a teaching career alongside his wife. It was only a matter of discussion at the moment, because he still loved the adrenaline rush of the lab and the mystery of his cases. But Sara knew he thought a lot about making the move.

She smiled, put his note back on the kitchen counter and went off to shower alone.

**xxxxxxx**

Grissom was about a mile and a quarter into the ride back to his Tahoe, pedaling smoothly along the shoulder of the road, scanning the asphalt ahead of him for stones or litter that could upset his bike. Between scans he allowed himself to enjoy the stark scenery. The Mojave Desert had a beauty all its own, shades of browns and yellows and grays, the sharp delineations between sunlight and shade, the occasional pinion tree or clump of sagebrush.

As much as he loved working in Las Vegas, he often thought it a shame what developers of the city had done to a perfectly decent wasteland. Even here, at the remote southern end of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, in a wilderness that cried out for solitude, it didn't exist. Traffic sped by him at a frenzied clip, tourists too eager to get to their destinations or too eager to get back onto a main highway and head somewhere else. All of them could say they had been to Pyramid Canyon. But could any of them say they had really seen it?

He grimaced a bit when he noticed he was coming up on a curve that would put the fierce canyon winds squarely across the road, making the bike harder to control. Adding to the difficulty was the temporary disappearance of the shoulder. He would have to ride perilously close to the traffic lane. He glanced back and saw only one pickup bearing down on him. After that, there was a long break in the traffic that should give him all the opportunity he needed to get around the curve safely.

As the pickup passed him, Grissom moved the bike onto the edge of the traffic lane and picked up his pace. He would be off the curve and back on the reemerged shoulder before the next vehicle caught up with him.

Whatever hit Grissom in the chest startled him at first. It couldn't have been a bird; he would have seen it coming. He decided it must have been a rock thrown off the tire of the pickup. It stung, and then it burned like a branding iron. The burn morphed into serious, radiating pain.

He glanced down at his jersey and saw the crimson spread of his blood bubbling through a tear in his jersey, rolling down his left breast. It wasn't soaking in because his accumulated sweat left no dry threads to absorb it. And it was flowing too fast, anyway.

He became incredibly dizzy and reached for a water bottle, but his hand never got to the bike's down tube. The wind began hammering him from the left. He was losing sensation in both hands and, with it, the ability to control the bike. It swerved to the right, and he managed to wrestle it back on course. He tried to brake, but he had no strength in his fingers. He felt as if he might lose consciousness. When the wind blasted him again, he had no defense. The bike swerved and rammed low metal barrier to his right, hurling him over the handlebars.

He landed on his back with a bone-breaking thud in the rocks and dust 10 feet below the roadway. His momentum turned into a rolling, tumbling, occasionally airborne slide down the canyon slope. He was moving too fast and was physically too weak to reach out and grab something to retard the fall. His head cracked hard into a boulder, his helmet taking the brunt of the blow. Modern helmets were designed to work once and once only. When subjected to a blow or collision, they shattered, efficiently dissipating the force of the impact. But they were then useless against additional stress. Now he might as well not be wearing the thing at all. If his head hit something a second time, it could kill him.

His body whipsawed as he crashed through isolated sage bundles. His riding clothes and skin were shredded by rocks. His fractured helmet crashed at least twice more into rocks, the impacts transmitted directly to his skull. The second of the impacts actually ripped the helmet off, and the protective goggles went with it.

He came to rest, splayed on his back against a scrub pinion tree. He felt himself pelted by a small avalanche of pebbles and stones, the detritus released to slide downhill by the force of his fall. When they reached their angle of repose, when equilibrium returned to the mountain, he began taking stock of himself. With monumental effort, he turned his head slightly so he could see how far he had fallen. He blinked blood from his eyes. His vision cleared marginally. He scanned the mountainside above him. He couldn't make out the road. He couldn't hear the traffic. He could see nothing of his lost bike. His overriding sensation became the pain in his body and fear.

He realized in a terrified instant that no one knew where he had gone riding this morning. No one would have the vaguest idea where to look for him. His last conscious thought was for Sara and how far they had come only to lose everything to this desert.

The desert she survived.

The desert he wouldn't.


	2. Chapter 2

Sara awoke from a rejuvenating nap and stretched. Her hand swept over Gil's side of the bed, the coverlet cool and empty. She hated that sensation. It made her feel lonely. The alarm clock on her nightstand said it was 2:12 p.m. Surely he was back from his bike ride by now, probably holed up in his office with a forensics journal. She smiled. She was very much in a mood to jar his concentration. She rinsed her mouth and went looking for him.

The study was empty. That surprised her, but she didn't worry. Then she saw that his note from the morning still sat on the kitchen counter. His truck wasn't back in the garage. His bike wasn't hanging from its ceiling hooks. She began to feel concern. She tried calling his cell phone. The call went to voice mail.

"Gil, when you get this, call me, please," she said. "I just want to know you're okay."

She sat on the sofa and stared at the phone, as if willing it to ring. And it did.

But the caller ID read, "Brass."

"Hey, Jim," Sara said.

"Hey, kiddo. How're you doing?"

"Everything's good, Jim. Thanks. You okay?"

"Absolutely. Is that buffed-out husband of yours around? I've tried calling his cell, but it keeps going to voice mail."

"I'm not sure where he is, to be honest. He went riding this morning, and he should have been back by now, but he isn't, and I haven't heard from him."

After a pause, Brass asked, "Are you worried about him?"

"Maybe just a little," Sara said. "I hope he's not on the highway today."

"You don't know where he went?"

"His note didn't say. Just that he'd gone riding and might be home later than usual. He tries to do one really long ride every week, and I assumed that's what he meant. Though why he'd try to do 30 or 40 miles in this heat is beyond me."

"He does pack water, right?"

"Oh, yeah. He's got three big bottles on his bike frame and belt holsters for two more."

"He's probably fine, then," Brass said. "Would you ask him to call me when he turns up?"

"Sure. You need him on a case? Should I send him to the lab?"

"No, it's just a question about insect progression."

"I'll let him know," she said.

"And, Sara, if he doesn't turn up in a reasonable time, let me know that, too, okay?"

**xxxxxxx**

It was nearly 5 p.m. when panic took a stranglehold on Sara. She called Brass, and she knew he could hear the fear in her voice. She had called every area hospital she could think of, and none had a record of treating or admitting anyone named Grissom. His cell phone still went directly to voice mail.

"I'll be right over," Jim told her.

While waiting, Sara called their friends and cancelled dinner. She said Gil had an emergency. They assumed it meant a case. Sara didn't tell them differently for the moment because she didn't know the nature of the emergency herself.

Jim walked in through the door she left unlocked for him. He took Sara's hands and sat with her on the sofa.

"I've put out an APB on the Tahoe," he said. "We've activated the LoJack tracker, but the monitoring equipment hasn't picked up a signal yet. There are lots of blind spots in the mountains. I've notified the state police and the National Park Police. Gil rides down at Lake Mead sometimes, right?"

Sara nodded.

"Okay, the sheriff and the LVPD all have the info, too. I think we're covered," he said. "Think, Sara. When he takes these long rides, where does he usually go?"

"Lake Mead. Boulder Basin."

Brass blew out a breath. "Well, they're jammed today. The holiday weekend and all. If he rode there, somebody might remember seeing him. On the other hand, if he remembered the holiday, he might have looked for someplace more secluded. You start thinking about what his alternative routes might have been, and I'll get the park police to start talking to visitors inside the rec area, maybe as far down as Willow Beach."

Brass was on the phone for nearly 20 minutes. When he returned to the sofa, he nodded.

"They're all over it," he said. "Did you think of anything else?"

"Well, you know he loves the petroglyphs, the ancient Indian rock art. Maybe he went exploring them and forgot the time, or got lost."

"Which petroglyphs?" Brass said. "They're everywhere."

"I don't know."

Sara's eyes caught Brass's as she tried to read the extent of his concern.

"Gil's in trouble, isn't he, Jim?" she said. The creases in Sara's forehead deepened, and her mouth turned down as it always did when terror threatened to overwhelm her.

"I don't know, kiddo. He might be." Brass bowed his head and shook it once, an act of frustration punctuated with a slow, heartbreaking sigh.

**xxxxxxx**

The injured cyclist opened his eyes slowly and closed them quickly against the burning sun. He felt as if his skin were on fire. He tried to remember how long he had been lying in the desert dust and how he came to be there in the first place. He had no idea. His state of awareness had telescoped into a spot only large enough to encompass his pain. The center of the spot was buried in the left side of his chest. From there the physical agony spread across his shoulders and up his neck to his head. It traveled down through his ribs, across his pelvis and down both legs. He couldn't feel his left arm at all.

He knew he should roll over, shield his face from the sun, and he tried, but the effort nauseated him. Something told him if he got sick and remained on his back, he could aspirate the vomit and choke to death.

He heard a vibration sound he couldn't immediately identify, but somewhere in his subconscious he knew it wasn't a good thing. The noise came again, and he recognized it: the warning signal of a rattlesnake. He studied a mental image of what it must look like: mottled brown, coiled, ready to strike, its tail upright and vibrating. The sound seemed to be coming from somewhere near his head. He couldn't turn to look for it; truth be told, he knew better than to try to move at all. His only defense against a strike was to lie still and hope the snake stopped perceiving him as a threat. A grown human could survive a rattler strike, but in his depleted condition, unable to seek immediate help, it would prove lethal.

The rattle came again.

_Oh, bite me!_

He thought maybe he smiled a little at his own weak attempt at humor. He enjoyed it right up to the moment the red waves of pain from his injuries swept him over a cliff and down a black hole that seemed to have no end.

His final brief thought: _Oh, God, I am so thirsty._


	3. Chapter 3

Catherine Willows rushed to the Grissom home as soon as Brass called. Nick Stokes would take over her shift so she could be there for Sara and to serve as a liaison between the crime lab and the agencies involved in the search. Every lab rat not on night-shift duty had volunteered to stay on to assist in their respective fields. They were sent home to rest and be ready if needed.

Sara paced the living room. She grew more and more desperate, more and more frustrated that there was nothing for her to do, no way for her to help. The flashbacks had started hours ago, morphing her experiences 18 months ago into what Gil might be feeling now. Was he alive? Conscious? Hurt? Feeling as desperate as she felt when she made her way to the top of the boulder with the clear 360-degree desert view that told her there was nothing, absolutely nothing, of civilization within her line of sight? She had considered giving up right there, lying down on the boulder and letting the blazing sun bake the life out of her. She closed her eyes and tried to will encouragement to Grissom:

_Don't give up. No matter how hopeless it seems, please, don't give up. We're coming. We will find you._

_I will find you._

She checked her watch. It crossed 6:36 p.m. The worst of the day's heat was over. The worst of the sun was setting. He would be terribly sunburned by now and susceptible to extreme chills in the cold of the desert night. If he survived to morning, he faced another 14 hours under the blazing sun with little, if any water.

She wanted to believe he would find a way to survive.

She knew how unlikely it was.

The sound of Brass snapping his phone shut jerked her out of her reverie.

"Park Service Police found the Tahoe," Brass announced. "It was parked at a cove about four miles north of Davis Dam, at the end of route nine. They put a LoJack receiver in a chopper, and when they got high enough, they picked up the signal."

"Gil?" Sara asked.

Brass shook his head. "Not yet. The chopper and units on the ground are backtracking route 9 to 163. But it's going to be getting dark…" His voice trailed off.

"I'm going down there," Sara said. She started hunting for her keys and her wallet.

"Not tonight, Sara," Catherine said, catching up to her in the kitchen, putting both her hands on her shoulders to stop her. "There's nothing you can do tonight."

Sara felt her temper flare and tears sting her eyes. She willed both of them away.

"I can't just _sit_ _here_," she said. "He didn't just _sit_ _here_ when it was me."

"He also didn't try to wander the desert in the dark," Catherine said. "He went out the next morning. I know. I was with him." She moved Sara back to the sofa. "So pack a few things tonight, and first thing tomorrow, before dawn, even, you and I will go down there, Sara. Together. We'll find him. We will. It will be all right."

Brass interrupted. "They think they've found the bike, uproad about 12 miles from the Tahoe," he said. "They're trying to recover it now."

Sara's chest felt tight. "Recover it from where?" she asked.

Brass sat down next to her and took her hands. "We don't know for sure yet that it's Grissom's, but there's a bike lodged in some sagebrush about 40 yards below the roadway."

Sara shuddered. "Any trace of Gil?"

"Nothing yet."

"Tell me they're not stopping for darkness," she said.

Brass put up a hand, palm out, to try to calm Sara, which was hopeless, and he knew it.

"They're doing the same thing down there we did up here for you," he said. "As soon as it starts to cool down, they'll send up choppers with IR, and try to locate a heat source that might be a body."

Brass mentally kicked himself as soon as he said "body." What a crappy choice of words.

If Sara noticed, she didn't rise to it, though Brass thought he did see her flinch a little.

**xxxxxxx**

Two members of the U.S. Park Service's search-and-rescue team had rappelled 42 yards down the sloping canyon wall to tie off Grissom's mangled mountain bike so it could be hauled up to the road. The saddle pouch contained his wallet and cell phone, confirming ownership.

If team members had been on the site 70 minutes later, they might have heard the crack of a rifle reverberate around the rocky landscape.

Luke and James Blount, air conditioning contractors who lived a few miles west of Kingman, Arizona, had poached an elk as the beast used the cover of dusk to make its way to the river to drink. With practiced skill, the two men gutted the carcass to let it bleed out and took turns pulling on a bottle of Black Jack while waiting for the process to run its course, Then they skinned and field-dressed the elk, putting the choice parts into an enormous cooler on the back of Luke's big black Dodge Mega-Cab pickup. The rest they left on the desert floor for the coyotes and turkey vultures. Three hours after the kill, they were ready to head home.

They finished off the bottle of sour mash as Luke pulled away from the site, and James tossed the empty out the window. They were slightly drunk and juiced on bourbon and adrenaline as they whooped over the successful hunt that would feed their families for months. There wasn't much thrill in the hunt itself – it had been more of an ambush, actually. But it was always a thrill to get away with a big-game poach right under the noses of the wardens.

"I'd sure have liked that head on my den wall," James said as the crime scene faded from their headlights.

"Not worth the chance," Luke told him. "All we need do is get stopped for something with a fresh elk head stickin' out the back window."

Luke carefully steered the truck back toward highway 163, which would take them east across the Nevada/Arizona border and home.

"Whoa, hold up," James said suddenly. Luke didn't know what James was thinking, and the truck slowed only a little as he took his foot off the accelerator.

"I said stop," James repeated, and Luke did, finally, following his younger brother's finger, which was pointing at something in the periphery of the headlight beams, something tangled up in a pinion tree. "What the fuck is that?"

"Looks like a body," Luke said. He repositioned the truck to put the site at the center of the headlight illumination. "Yep, it looks like a body." He grabbed for his door handle but stopped when James grabbed his left arm.

"Don't get involved. Just leave it. Let's get outta here."

"I'll leave it if he's dead," Luke said. "It ain't right leaving somebody alive out here without a chance in hell of survival."

Luke pulled closer and left the engine running so his battery didn't drain. James grabbed a flashlight and both men left the truck, approaching the body with caution.

"Holy mother of god," Luke said as James played the beam over the shredded flesh on the desert floor. "He's gotta be dead. Where the hell'd he come from?"

Luke crouched down and touched the inside of the man's left wrist. He shook his head.

"I don't feel a pulse," he said.

"Then let's the fuck split," James said.

Luke nodded, but before he got up, he touched the side of the body's throat, over the carotid artery. He looked up at his brother in surprise.

"Got a pulse here," he said. "Ain't much of one, but this poor guy's definitely alive."

"We can't call the cops," James said. "They'll trap the cell phone number, trace it back to us and pretty soon be askin' hard questions about what we was doin' out here after dark."

Luke thought a minute. They could drive the guy into Kingman and leave him on the hospital steps. Well, no. Too much chance of witnesses. The only other alternative he really didn't want to consider. But he had no choice.

"Let's get him in the back seat," Luke said. "We'll get him back to Kingman and take him to Bill. He'll know what to do."

James laughed at the thought of asking their Uncle Bill for help. "You think Bill's gonna nurse this guy back to health? A drunk doctor who can't even field-dress a deer cause his hands shake so bad? And who's gonna nursemaid this poor fool? Laura ain't gonna give up our spare bedroom to a stranger who's gonna bleed all over the mattress. Martha ain't gonna put him up at your house."

"Let's just get him back across the state line alive," Luke said. "We'll worry about the rest later."

So it was when the chopper with the IR heat-seeking gear passed over the pinion tree, Grissom's body was long gone, and the remains of the elk carcass had cooled, leaving nothing for the sensitive instruments to read.

**xxxxxxx**

_Pain!_

_His head had bounced a little and contacted something padded but hard. As intense sensory discomfort trilled along his nervous system, his body instinctively tried to move away from it, which only triggered new agony from his chest to his feet. His own moans woke him._

"_Hey, Luke, take it easy," a man's voice said. "Slow down. You're bouncin' him around, and he's probably got broken bones."_

"_I'm doin' the best I can here," another man said. "It was a pothole is all. I didn't see it."_

_The injured man slowly opened his eyes. It took a monumental effort, sapping strength he didn't have to spare. He lay in almost total darkness, his surroundings silhouetted by some dim external light source. It occurred to him after a minute of thinking about it that he was in the back seat of a car, or a truck, maybe. He could see the backs of two bucket seats to his left. He had no idea what was on his right. His head hurt too much to turn it to look._

_When he rolled his eyes up, he could see a vehicle door with an armrest. That must have been the impact source that woke him. He could see his legs bent at impossible angles, out of necessity. He was too tall to lie in a normal position along the back seat of a car. His left leg throbbed obsessively, and when he tried moving it to a more comfortable position it shot bolts of agony that went right to his brain. The only place that hurt worse than his ankle was his chest, left side, four or five inches below his collar bone. And that burned like fire, making it difficult to breathe._

_He had no idea where he was._

_He had no clue what had happened to him._

_He couldn't identify either of the voices he heard._

_He had no memory of being stretched out along this seat._

_And then it hit him like an uppercut._

_He couldn't summon any memories before this moment._

_He had no idea who he was._

_It was as if a black hole had sucked his life from him._

_His memories. His past. His knowledge of what he looked like. His plans. His passions. His deeds of good, or evil. Those he might have loved, and who might have loved him back. Those he hated, and those who reflected his hatred._

_Gone. Erased._

_There was nothing he could summon except the all-encompassing pain and the growing despair._

_The situation terrified him. He had lost all sense of self. The only world he knew was this small, metal-encased shell filled with silhouettes. He was nothing more than a silhouette himself, devoid of identity, substance or depth. Two-dimensional._

_Oh, God, he hurt so much._

_The physical agony was bad enough; the emotional agony was worse._

_He felt the red waves lapping at him, and he welcomed them and let the oblivion carry him away from the pain._


	4. Chapter 4

The Dodge Ram pulled up in front of a faux adobe style home with a sand-and-rock yard and a remarkable absence of any foundation landscaping or tree life. The house stood isolated from other homes in an area that had grown up rather free-form, a cluster of two or three structures here and there, a few standalones like this one, and lots of barren open space.

Luke Blount braked gingerly, aware of the critically injured passenger in the back seat. James jumped out and took the two concrete steps to the front porch. He arrived at the front door and pounded on it three times.

It was opened by a wholesome blonde woman, early 30s, who would have been pretty if she had taken some time with her hair, clothes and makeup. When she recognized James she flashed a broad, warm smile.

"Jimmy!" she said and pulled him into an embrace. "What on earth are you and Luke doing here at this time of night?"

"Is Bill home, Cassie?" James asked.

Cassie flashed a mock scowl. "It's almost 11. Where'd you think Daddy'd be at this hour? He's not only home, he's near passed out."

"You gotta get him out here," James said. "We found a guy hurt bad. He needs a doctor."

"So take him to Kingman General. It's seven miles up the road. You know that."

"Can't," James said. "I'll explain later. Just get your daddy, please."

Cassie motioned for him to come in and waved a hello toward Luke in the truck. "I'll try," she said. "Tryin' ain't always enough."

James fidgeted around the sparely decorated living room while his Cousin Cassie Firth tried to wake her father, William Firth, James's uncle, his mother's brother, family black sheep, board-certified internist and world-champion drunk. He had slipped from respected physician to ridiculed lush after loss of his wife to breast cancer 11 years earlier. James always thought Cassie never married because she felt obligated to stay home and look after her father. And it was a shame, too, because Cassie had been a looker. Still could be if she bothered.

Christ, what was taking so long? He and Luke had to get home, divvy up the elk meat, cut it up and get it stored in freezers before they could go to bed. James had nearly decided there would be no sleep for him this night when Cassie reappeared leading a man who was 62 but appeared 20 years older. He was rubbing his palms up and down over a stubbled face lined by broken blood vessels and punctuated by bloodshot eyes that couldn't quite seem to focus.

"What's the problem, Jimmy?" he said, the accent of unmetabolized alcohol clear in his speech.

"Me and Luke found a guy out in the desert hurt pretty bad," he said. "He needs medical help, but we can't take him to the hospital."

"Why not?"

"Too many questions. Who is he? Where'd we find him? What the hell were we doing at the Lake Mead Rec Area in the middle of the night? Questions we can't, or don't want to answer, if you get me."

Bill Firth nodded. "You were shopping for groceries again."

"Yeah, somethin' like that."

"When are people gonna forget I used to be a doctor?" Bill said. "I forgot it a decade ago. Your new friend outside?"

James nodded.

"Lemme get some boots on."

**xxxxxxx**

Though Firth walked a bit unsteadily, he seemed to be focusing better by the time he yanked open the back door of Luke's truck. He regarded the body lying there as James played a flashlight from head to toe.

""Holy shit," Firth said. "What meat grinder did this guy fall through?"

"I kinda figure from the clothes he's a bike rider," Luke said. "Route nine's about 150 yards or so above the spot we found him, so he mighta got hit up on the road and come over the crash barrier."

Firth shook his head. "If he fell down Pyramid Canyon, he should be dead."

"He pretty much is," James said.

Firth began assessing his patient and remembered enough of his medical school training to locate the broken bones and the worst of the wounds without excess delay.

Cassie joined them now and peered over her father's shoulder. After she got past the emotional shock of all the blood and the sadness of the injuries, she couldn't help notice the man beneath the damage: the strikingly handsome face, the almost-hard body, the obvious and ample endowment.

_Unless he's keepin' a spare pair of socks packed in there, he's somethin' else," she thought. It wouldn't be an imposition to ask me to nurse him back to health._

Then she saw the wedding band on his left hand. She exhaled a sigh of disappointment.

Firth turned to her, unsure what the sigh meant but certain he needed her help. "Get some of those moving pads out of my closet and lay 'em over the guest bed. Put a couple of clean sheets over those. He's still bleeding some, and they'll protect the bed."

He turned back to Luke and James. "We'll need to carry him inside and back to the bedroom. And you're gonna have to be gentle. He's got clear head injuries. His left fibula is broken just above the ankle, the left radius is broken just below the elbow. He's got some broken ribs, and it looks like he's got a penetration wound to his chest. God knows what's goin' on inside him. I can straighten, splint, cast and tape up the broken bones. I can give him bed rest to help him recover from concussions. I can't do anything for him if his skull's fractured or if he's bleeding internally. I should call 911."

"You can't," Luke said. "Your family's got to come before him."

"You ever hear of the Hippocratic Oath?"

"You ain't the exactly the right person to be fallin' back on medical principles."

"Yes, I _am._ One of those principles is, 'First, do no harm.' I tossed my shingle the day I realized my emotions and a bottle were standing between me and the welfare of my patients." Firth was sobering up quickly. "James, do you really think a man's life is a fair price to pay for you and Luke getting out of a poaching fine?"

"It wouldn't be our first, Bill," James said. "So it wouldn't be just a fine. We're looking at some jail time."

Firth poked a thumb back toward the truck. "Yeah, and he's facing a death sentence."

James adopted an expression of determination. His uncle didn't have the emotional energy to fight it. Besides, he acknowledged to himself, James was right. He really had no right to invoke the Hippocratic Oath. Even though he still had a license to practice medicine – he'd stepped out of that picture before he could be pushed – he no longer considered himself a doctor and no one else did, either. Just a drunk with some surgical tools and a couple of leftover script pads.

He nodded. "Just get him on the bed and let me figure it out," he said.

The only tools Firth had to conduct an examination and make medical decisions was an old stethoscope, a pen light and his eyes. He didn't even own a BP cuff any more. If he could equate saving this man's life to a war, it would be like using BB guns against nuclear missiles. The first thing he would have to do is take care of whatever had penetrated the man's chest. Without access to an x-ray, he had no choice but to probe and pull, if he could even reach the unknown projectile.

He pulled his old medical bag out of the back of his closet, rummaged around for the implements he needed and sterilized them in a pot of boiling water on the stove. As he watched the water begin to move as it neared 212 degrees F, he admitted the enormity of the battle he faced.

_I never should have let these boys talk me into this. I'm a drunk, not a doctor._

But when Firth finally got up the nerve to swab the skin with alcohol and begin his probe, he was able to locate and extract a one-inch piece of broken green glass. It might have been part of a beer bottle, he thought. But at least it was out.

He didn't realize that during the extraction process the glass fragment had broken in two. What he pulled out of the injured man's chest was about the same size as the shard left behind.

**xxxxxxx**

Firth sat at his kitchen table and made a list on one of his old purchase orders.

"Cassie, I want you to take this to the medical supply place first thing in the morning, and I mean at 7 a.m. sharp," he said. "Ask for Joe Seavers, you remember him, right? If he asks why I need this stuff, tell him I'm trying to make sure I've got some of my old basic skills, that I'm sobering up and thinking about going back into my practice in like a free clinic or something."

Cassie almost did a double-take.

"Is that true?" she asked.

"No, but it will get me what I need for the guy in the back room." He tore off the sheet of paper and handed it to her. Then he pulled over his old script pad and wrote a prescription for the strongest antibiotic he remembered. He handed that to her, too. "Go get this filled now. Go to Tillman's. They're open all night. There's nothing here that should raise suspicions, but if somebody asks, I cut myself and it got infected. Nobody's gonna doubt that an old drunk could do that. Okay? You good with doing this?"

She wasn't, but she nodded. He needed the reinforcement.

"You think you can save him?" she asked.

He sighed deeply.

"He's in shock, maybe comatose. Indications are the head trauma is severe. He had multiple deep wounds that already show signs of infection. Something entered his chest, and it sounds as if his left lung has collapsed. One of his broken ribs might even have punctured it, which would mean internal bleeding. And I'm treating him in my back bedroom with medical science that's 50 years old. That should give you a pretty good idea what my prognosis is.

"Now while you get that prescription for antibiotics filled, I'm gonna go back there and clean him up and see if I can brace his head and his limbs so he doesn't do more damage before I can make some splints and casts in the morning."

**xxxxxxx**

Nothing happened overnight.

The search crews found nothing.

The interviews with park visitors yielded nothing.

A methodic search of Grissom's Tahoe found nothing.

Everyone knew, though none dared voice it, that if Grissom wasn't dead already, his hours were limited and growing shorter with every degree the desert sun rose above the horizon.

So it was that Catherine and Sara set off for Pyramid Canyon at 3 a.m. with Catherine driving, Sara riding shotgun and Brass and Nick in the back seat. None of them could have stayed behind in Vegas while the search proceeded without them. Sara had been agitated all night. She wouldn't attempt to sleep. She wouldn't lie down. She made pot after pot of coffee and drank most of it. By the time the team was ready to hit the road, her nerves were in high jangle.

"Listen to me, kiddo," Brass said from the back seat as he leaned forward and put a hand on Sara's shoulder. He handed her a small throw pillow he had swiped from the living room sofa. "I want you to find a comfortable position and put your head back on this and try to sleep for an hour. I swear to you if I hear anything, I'll wake you up."

Sara nodded. Then she placed the pillow in her lap and continued at full alert in the front passenger seat. Brass shook his head and sighed.

Catherine reached a hand across the console and covered Sara's clenched fist.

"We'll find him, Sara. It will be all right."

When Sara responded, everyone in the truck could hear that her teeth were clenched, that the strain of the hours of waiting and worrying had taken their toll.

"Don't you dare patronize me, Catherine, any of you. How dare you tell me it will be all right. You have no idea." Her voice began to rise. "I was out in that sun for 15 hours, and when the medics got to me I was about 15 minutes away from the point of no return, when I would have died, or worse, spent the rest of my life in a chronic vegetative state. And I hadn't fallen off a cliff. I wasn't losing that much blood. If Grissom's alive, he's dehydrating a lot faster than I did. He's pretty much out of time already. So don't tell me everything going to be fine. Just don't …" Her voice trailed off and ended in a choked sob.

Catherine left her hand covering Sara's, willing it to become a conduit to wick away the younger woman's anguish and transfer it to an additional set of shoulders.

**xxxxxxx**

They got to the staging area for the Grissom search just after 4 a.m., as the first light appeared on the eastern horizon. The Park Service briefing depressed them. Grissom had not been found. The IR-equipped choppers picked up nothing except a painfully sad final battle between a sick pronghorn and a coyote, a fight the coyote was preordained to win.

"Survival of the fittest. Weeding out the sick and the lame," a park policeman explained, realizing too late the analogy didn't sit very well with those so personally and professionally close to the man whose life they were hoping to save. The officer's name was Ron Percival. When he realized his faux pas, he instantly regretted it.

"A couple of our guys rappelled the full length of the slope," he said, continuing quickly. "They only had headlamps to see by. It was a dangerous mission. But we hoped we might find something that would tell us what happened to Grissom."

"And?" Brass said.

"He fell a long way, maybe 160 yards. We found a high-end helmet, smashed, and a pair of dark safety goggles." Percival reached into a bag and pulled them out. Sara examined them with a flashlight and nodded, flinching just a little. Percival noted there were no tears and admired her stoicism. "We also found some stones and rocks with blood on them. We marked them but didn't move them. Down near the bottom, we found a lot of blood up against a scrub pinion. We figure that's what stopped his freefall. He was lying there a while, judging from the amount of blood. But the fact he was bleeding is proof he wasn't dead when he hit the tree."

"Where is he now?" Sara said, her voice not much more than a whisper. "He couldn't have just gotten up and wandered off."

Percival bit his lip, started to say something, stopped and reordered his thoughts.

"Well, yes, he could have," he said. "He'd probably have been pretty out of it, in shock, you know, but we've seen people in trouble out here do some remarkable things."

"So how do we find him?" Nick asked.

"The thing is," Percival said, "if he's stumbling around out here, the choppers should have found the heat source last night."

"Just spit it out!" Sara demanded. "What are you saying?"

Percival looked at her, and his heart broke for her. Her face was morphing expressions as fast as he could identify them: pain, fear, grief. And now, finally, tears glistened in her eyes. A symphony of anguish.

"The chances are, he would have been too weak to have gotten very far on foot," he said. "When we find him … if we find him … I don't think we'll find him alive. I'm really sorry."


	5. Chapter 5

"What's the best way to get down there?" Sara asked, nodding toward the bottom of Pyramid Canyon.

"We could all rappel, but it's a tough exercise, and I don't recommend it unless you have to collect evidence," Percival said. "It's a bit of a roundabout trip, but if your Tahoe's got four-wheel drive, I can transport all of you that way."

The next 35 minutes passed in near silence as Percival steered the Tahoe off road at low speeds over rough terrain, each member of the party lost in random thoughts of Grissom. Sara stared out the side window from the front passenger seat beside Percival, who drove. She tried to will her eyes to see a stocky man, nearly six feet tall, stumbling along in search of help. She would have settled for a vision of the same man lying on the ground, as long as there was a rise and fall in the chest, a pulse at the neck.

What she actually saw made her stomach turn over.

"Oh, no," she whispered. "Oh, dear god, no."

"What?" The question came from Brass, sitting directly behind Sara. He tried to follow her line of sight and recognized immediately what upset her.

Percival braked, and his passengers were out immediately, all looking at the sky where seven turkey vultures wheeled on air currents rising from the desert floor. Their wings were spread in broad V positions, and the red heads were diagnostic of the carrion-eaters. All had their heads bent and their eyes intent on something dead or dying below.

As if on signal, the breeze picked up. It was blowing in their faces and carrying the distinct gagging stench of the early stages of decomp.

Natural human reaction would have been to turn away, but Sara began running toward it.

Nick caught up with her first and hauled her to a stop.

"Don't, Sara, please," he said. She swallowed hard. She had no desire to see the body of the man she loved torn apart by scavengers, but she had to know. Was this the ghastly end of the search?

Brass had joined them. "Stay here with Catherine," he told Sara. "Nick and Ron and I will go. We'll find out what's out there, and we'll let you know as soon as we do, kiddo. Please, will you wait here?"

Sara felt herself nod. She was numb.

As the men walked off, Catherine turned Sara away from them, away from the vultures and urged her back toward the Tahoe. Abruptly she stopped, turned away from Catherine and got sick. Since she had eaten nothing since the day before, the retching quickly turned into dry heaves she didn't seem able to stop.

Catherine rubbed her back, and the nausea began to subside.

"Let's get in the truck," Catherine said. "At least we can wait in air conditioning."

Sara climbed into the front seat and let her head loll against the window. She closed her eyes, suddenly tired beyond description. What was it about her and Grissom? Why did fate step in at odd, unfortunate times and simply dictate, "Stop. You've been too happy. And you're going to have to suffer for it now." Was their happiness such a crime? Had they been such horrible people that they didn't deserve joy and contentment together? What gods had they offended so deeply?

_Please let him live. Stop his pain. Heal his injuries. Don't let him die._

Sara wondered if she had been praying, and if so, to whom. She had told Grissom once she didn't believe in a higher power. At the time it was true. Had something changed? Or was this an act of desperation – just in case?

She was vaguely aware of Catherine reaching across her and rummaging in the glove box. She handed Sara some wet naps to clean her face and a small aerosol tube of Binaca mouthwash spray to cover the residual taste of bile.

They sat in silence until Catherine's cell phone rang. She had been holding it at the ready and flipped it open immediately.

"Talk to me," she said.

"Yeah? Really? On our way."

She turned to Sara. "It's an elk."

Sara closed her eyes and blew out a breath. She used the Binaca once more and then tossed it back in the glove box.

Catherine turned over the engine and kicked the truck into gear as she continued talking. "Somebody poached it. Probably in the last 24 hours. They took the meat and left the rest. There are tire tracks, and they lead off in the direction of that pinion tree. We're going to pick up the guys and follow the tracks. They might explain where Grissom is."

Sara felt her eyes go wide. "If somebody found him and picked him up…"

"Yeah," Catherine finished for her. "He might be alive and getting medical help somewhere."

Sara frowned. In that instant she realized she might have to rethink this whole higher power thing.

**xxxxxxx**

Catherine continued to steer the Tahoe along the desert floor, staying well to the left of the tire tracks they followed. Brass had changed seats with Sara and served as Catherine's eyes, telling her when to move further to the left to avoid overrunning the trail. When the pinion tree came into view, he ordered, "Stop here." Catherine did, and they all left the truck gingerly, eyes focused on the ground, watching for anything that might provide a clue to the identity or ownership of the truck.

Nick grabbed his kit and camera out of the back.

"I'll find the best imprint available, take photos and do a mold," he said. When he found one he liked, he stopped and began working. The rest of the group moved forward.

Brass pointed at the ground about 20 yards from the pinion. "Looks like they stopped here, backed up and repositioned the vehicle."

"Yeah," Catherine said. "Somebody spotted Grissom, but the angle of the headlights here …" she pointed at the bottom-most track "… wasn't quite right. So the driver backed up, here, and turned to get the lights straight on the scene."

"Look at these," Percival said. "Two sets of footprints. Two people got out of the vehicle, one on either side."

"Nick needs to mold these, too," Catherine said as she lifted her camera and took photos. She called to Nick and pointed them out.

"In a minute, Cath," he yelled back. "Can you come over here and help me? I found a place to measure the wheelbase, and I need another set of hands."

As Catherine trudged back to Nick, Brass looked for Sara. He found her standing at the pinion tree, her hand over her mouth. He walked to her and put his arm around her shoulders. She sagged against him.

He looked where she her eyes were focused and saw the blood, now brownish black and crusted over. There was a lot of it, in a lot of different places. Grissom had bled from a number of different wounds, and the blood loss had been considerable. Brass couldn't escape the possibility that Grissom had bled out and died right here, and whoever found him and picked him up had transported a dead body. He wouldn't give voice to his thoughts, but they must have occurred to Sara, too. He saw the tear tracks on her face and felt her trembling.

She seemed to be struggling to rein in her emotions, and she shouldn't be doing that.

Brass turned her away from the scene and wrapped her in his arms to let her cry it out. But crying wasn't what she wanted.

"Catherine and Nick are busy with the tire tracks," she said into his shoulder. "You want to collect the blood trace, or should I?

Eventually, Catherine collected the samples. When they had done all there was to do at the scene, she suggested they continue to follow the tire tracks. Ultimately, they could provide a clue to the truck's destination. Brass practically had to pull Sara away from the pinion tree. He understood she felt as if she was abandoning a part of Grissom to the harsh desert.

"Can't we at least bury this?" she said, her eyes pleading with her friends and then glancing up at the wheeling vultures. Eventually, they would find the lost blood.

Brass and Catherine exchanged looks.

"There's nothing left here to find," Catherine said. "I guess I'm the senior CSI. I'll release the scene if it's all right with the Park Police."

"Sure," Percival said. "It's the right thing to do."

He and Nick grabbed shovels out of the back of the Tahoe. Nick spotted something seven feet from the truck.

"Hey, guys, look at this." He took a swab from his kit, ran it into the mouth of the empty Black Jack bottle lying in the sand and held it up for everyone to see. "Hasn't been out here long," he said. "Might be worth checking it for DNA and prints."

After it was bagged and tagged, Nick and Ron dug a three-foot-square hole next to the scrub pinion. When they were ready, they looked to Sara for a sign that she was.

She nodded. Her face contorted in an effort to hold off the tears as the earth soaked with Grissom's blood disappeared into the makeshift grave with clean earth covering and protecting it. She allowed Brass to lead her back to the Tahoe where she curled up in the back seat, alone with her thoughts and her memories and her worst fears.


	6. Chapter 6

The tire tracks were easy enough to follow. They led the team for 2.2 miles and ended in the pavement of route 163. Brass, Catherine, Nick and Percival left the truck for a closer view. Sara remained huddled in the back.

"The way they angle onto the road says they were headed east," Percival said. "That means they could have been going to Laughlin, or across the border to Arizona. Bullhead City. Kingman."

"They couldn't be going too far," Nick said. "They've got a load of elk meat that needs refrigeration pretty quick." Then he thought of something and winced. "Unless they're carrying their own freezer. Then they'd have all the time in the world. Pick up the interstate and …"

"I doubt it," Percival said. "Most hunters, when they field dress a kill, won't do much more than quarter it for easy transportation. They either do the finer butchering when they get home or take it to a pro. I didn't see evidence on that kill site that they did anything more than bleed it and gut it. They didn't even take the trophy. They weren't lookin' at a long drive. Laughlin and Bullhead City are closest. Kingman's only about 45 miles."

**xxxxxxx**

While the CSI team and the Park Police worked, so did the former Dr. Firth.

He started his unexpected guest on 500 mg of tetracycline as soon as Cassie brought the prescription back from the pharmacy the night before. He had ordered a 14-day supply with two refills, thinking that should take care of whatever infection might develop. He chose tetracycline because it was a good way to attack a broad spectrum of infections, including respiratory. Pneumonia was one of Firth's biggest concerns right now.

He didn't know, but it wouldn't have surprised him to learn, the biggest medical threat was coming at his patient from an entirely different direction.

The man in the back bedroom survived the night. The first order of business in the morning was to set his broken bones. But first, he had to be cleaned up. He still wore the biking clothes shredded in his fall. He smelled of dried sweat, crusted blood and caked desert dirt. Firth filled a basin with hot water and an astringent soap. He picked up a pair of scissors and moved to the patient. Cassie presented herself to help.

"I can handle this," he said.

"It'll go faster if I help," she said.

"_No!_" he said. "Look, I'm going to be cutting off what's left of his clothes, and I have nothing for him to wear. The only reason you want to help is to gawk at his body, and while I understand your urge, that's not what I call helping. Give the poor man some privacy, Cassie. You really want to help, go to Wal-Mart or someplace and buy him some clothes, sweats and tees, three of each, extra large so they're loose. And some sort of slipper." The man had lost one shoe in his fall. Firth tugged off the other and checked inside. "He's a ten and a half. Go on now."

She went.

Once she was out of the house Firth made quick work of what remained of the patient's clothes, noting as he tossed away the last scrap of material that Cassie would, indeed, have enjoyed the view. He cleaned the body and the wounds, rolling him over onto his less-injured right side to get access to his back and buttocks. By the time Cassie returned, Firth had the man clean and comfortable on the bed, covered with a blanket.

With Cassie's help, Firth built passable casts for the patient's arm and leg and did a commendable job of taping up the broken ribs. He kept checking the man's eyes to gauge the severity and progression of the head injuries, and to his surprise and relief, there seemed to be improvement. At least the man wasn't in a coma. He and Cassie had been able to arouse him to the point it was safe to give him the tetracycline pill with some water without the risk of him choking.

But there were other hurdles to overcome. The patient needed liquids and nutrition, but Firth had no access to IV supplies. And there was the matter of the man's elimination needs. Firth couldn't insert a catheter because he had no access to those, either.

Perhaps, the doctor thought, a shot of bourbon would help settle his nerves and produce some insights. And if one shot was good, two shots were even better.

**xxxxxxx**

Back in Las Vegas, the investigation progressed with agonizing sluggishness. Nick identified the tracks as belonging to 17-inch Goodrich T/A all-season, all-terrain tires, most-typically found as aftermarket upgrades on 4x4 pickup trucks. The wheelbase Nick and Catherine had been able to measure out in the desert was 160.3 inches, an exact match for three models of Dodge Ram Mega-Cabs. Since the tires weren't standard issue, it became a matter of tracking down the store that sold them and matching them to a specific vehicle and then to a specific owner. Tire retailers were the logical starting place.

Nick found 11 large tire retailers and a dozen smaller ones in the Laughlin-Bullhead City-Kingman area, fewer, actually, than he expected.

Brass assumed the assignment as mission coordinator.

Getting cooperation from the various law enforcement jurisdictions proved difficult. When they got right down to it, the only crime had been poaching the elk, and that was a federal matter since it happened on federal land. So Brass got creative. He categorized the crime as the interstate kidnapping of a law enforcement official – and that got everyone's attention. Still, the process moved like glue on a mid-winter morning in Minneapolis.

Meanwhile, the DNA came back on the bourbon bottle found next to the dead elk. There were two matches of both saliva and fingerprints, with enough epithilials in common to confirm they came from related individuals. Both XY. Both in the system. Brothers. Luke and James Blount of Henderson Nevada. Multiple arrests for big-game poaching.

The only trouble was, there was no Luke Blount, no James Blount living in Henderson. And since leaving, neither had been arrested for anything.

Big dead end.

**xxxxxxx**

On the third day after he arrived at the Firth home, the injured biker regained consciousness.

He was alone in a small room.

He was alone in a small life.

The room began and ended in four walls and a closed door. It contained one bed, a battered dresser, two night stands and a window air conditioner that strained to blow coolish air across his face.

His life began in the back seat of an unfamiliar vehicle and ended in pain, in a bed in a small room with coolish air stroking his face.

His head hurt, though less, he thought, than when he awoke in somebody's back seat. He could feel his left arm again and wished he couldn't. His left leg throbbed. His chest was the worst. It still burned as if on fire, and the pain flared white-hot every time he tried to take a deep breath. He felt as if is someone had pulled a wide belt around his chest and cinched it two notches beyond bearable. It felt as if someone had jammed an ice pick into his lungs.

Using his right hand, he lifted the blanket and examined himself by the ambient light streaking through the window. He wore a pair of heather gray shorts, like sweats, with a draw-string at the waist, untied. He saw a cast on his left leg from the knee to the ankle. Another on his left arm from the wrist to the elbow. He was tightly taped across his abdominal muscles. That area was a source of pain when he inhaled, but not the only source. He saw a piece of bloody gauze taped over his left breast. More of the breathing difficulty originated somewhere beneath that flimsy patch. The rest of his body was covered with jagged cuts and abrasions, some looking inflamed with infection, and black-and-purple bruises.

_What happened to me? _

_Where am I?_

_For the love of Christ, who am I?_

His breathing began to come fast and shallow, and he recognized it as the beginning of a panic attack. He had no idea how he knew it, but it knew it with certainty.

He examined himself again, and this time he noticed a striking gold wedding band on his left hand.

_I'm married._

_Okay that's something. _

_Narrows me down to about half the people in the world._

_Is this my home?_

_Is my wife here?_

_Will I even remember her?_

_Will someone please help me? Please!_

The bedroom door began to open, and a young woman stood there. He turned his head a little to the left against something that restricted such movements. He looked at her. He had no idea what his own face looked like, but he thought he might be middle-aged. She looked to be 30 or so, perhaps a bit young to be his wife.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

He thought she was pretty in an unkempt sort of way.

She smiled at him, apparently glad to see him awake.

As if reading his mind about her unkempt appearance, she reached up and hooked a stray strand of sandy hair behind her ear.

He felt as if someone had hit him in the chest.

Pain.

A hollow sensation. A longing. A loneliness.

An overwhelming loneliness.

She turned away, and he tried to ask her to stay. He couldn't bear to be alone in that room again where he knew no one, not even himself.

She didn't walk away. She called out to someone.

"Daddy, he's awake. Come quick."

She left the door open and walked to his bedside. She pulled up a straight-back chair and sat next to him. He hadn't seen the chair before.

She reached under the blanket, found his left hand below the cast and took it in her own warm hand.

"Can you talk?" she asked.

He tried. His mouth was too dry. His throat too scratchy. She reached to the nightstand and brought back a bottle of water with a flex straw in it.

"Not too much or too fast," she said. "Your stomach's probably a little upset. You've been getting antibiotics without food. You don't want to start throwing up."

She extracted her hand from beneath the blanket and helped him lift his head. He took several sips. The water was room temperature but welcome nonetheless.

"I know it's warm," she said. "Easier on the stomach."

He nodded, understanding. And she lowered his head again.

"You can have more in a minute," she said. "Can you try to talk to me now?"

He swallowed once. Hard. "Who am I?" he asked, surprised at the clear undercurrent of anxiety in his voice.

Her face morphed into sadness. "You don't remember?"

"N-no. Nothing. Do I know you?"

"I'm Cassie," she said.

"Are … are you my wife?"

She smiled ruefully then. "I wish."

"Excuse me?"

"You're married to someone very lucky," she said. "But it isn't me."

An older man stumbled into the room just then. Was this the one she had summoned as, "Daddy?" He looked old enough to be the woman's grandfather. As he moved to come up on the patient's right, he pushed a piquant cloud of bourbon odor ahead of him. It hovered over the bed.

"Let me take a look at you, son," he said.

Son? Could he be the right age to be this man's son? Well, that narrowed things down a little more. He was married and probably younger than 60. At the rate he was gathering information, he'd know his identity by nightfall.

He groaned at the impossibility of his own humor.

"What is this place?" he asked.

"I'm Dr. William Firth, and this is my home," the older man said.

"Doctor?"

"In title only. You're my first patient in 11 years."

The patient sighed. "I hope you remember something."

The doctor smiled slightly. "A little."

"Am I hurt badly?"

"Yes."

"Why here? Why not a hospital?"

"Long story."

"I want to hear it."

"Not now. You need to rest."

He could feel himself becoming angry.

"I don't need rest. I need information. I need to know who I am?"

The doctor leaned back from his examination.

"I can't help you with that," he said.

"ID?"

"You didn't have any on you."

"Missing persons report?"

"Maybe somewhere. I'd find out if I knew where you came from."

"Where am I?"

"Just outside Kingman, Arizona. Does that ring any bells?"

He shook his head slightly.

"You were found in Nevada, north of Laughlin. Does that help?"

"No."

"You were wearing the slicks that cyclists wear. So you probably were hurt in a fall from a bicycle." The doctor peered at him hopefully.

The patient simply shook his head again.

"Well, don't get too upset," the doctor said. "You've had a head injury. Amnesia isn't uncommon in cases of severe concussion. Chances are it will all come back to you. When you wake up from a sleep, try to remember your dreams. Sometimes things start to come back that way. Okay?"

The patient frowned and nodded. His eyes had gone far away.

The doctor took his bourbon cloud and left.

Cassie took his hand again.

She rubbed her thumb over his knuckles, and he took another emotional shot to the chest. Something so familiar about that gesture. Something so special.

"Don't leave," he asked of her.

"I won't," she said. "I'll stay with you until you're asleep, and after that I'll be right outside." She laughed lightly. "The house isn't that big. I'll hear you if you call me."

He closed his eyes and held onto two images, one visual, one tactile.

Hair hooked behind an ear.

A soft hand stroking the back of his hand.

_I left something out there, and I need to find it again._

_It's precious to me._

_If only I could remember it._

_Her._

_Oh, dear God, please help me remember._


	7. Chapter 7

The next day he started to eat bland solid food. He began drinking lots of fluids. A strapping man in his mid- to late-30s showed up to help him to and from the bathroom. The man's name was Luke. Every day, with the bedroom door closed, the doctor bathed him. Grissom's headache continued to diminish. Some of his wounds looked to be healing. Others didn't. The agony of breathing continued. His chest felt tight. The deep wound on the left side continued to seep blood, now joined by pus.

The next morning, just before dawn, he dreamed; he thought it might have been the first time. He was making love to someone. At first he thought it might be Cassie, but the woman had long, dark brown hair, brown eyes so deep he could get lost in them, and a smile that made the world seem fine. Her hands on his skin, caressing him, knowing exactly how to create his highest state of arousal, kissing him until he couldn't breathe, using her tongue on his body from his face to his thighs, her mouth around his erection as if it were her favorite flavor of ice cream … he needed to be inside her so badly. He called out to her, reached for her.

Cassie had entered his bedroom when she heard him moan. She watched his face and decided that, this time at least, the sounds hadn't been the result of pain. At least not the kind of pain you could observe in his wounds. As his animation continued, she sneaked a look under his blanket and saw instantly that this dream was very real to him. She entertained a notion of helping him finish it when suddenly she saw that his mind had been all the help he needed. She'd be washing those shorts in the morning. She smiled and was happy for him. She wondered about the woman in the dream, who she was, where she was, what she looked like. She must be something.

In the morning, he remembered nothing of the dream. He had developed a serious fever. He had a hard time following the argument between Dr. Firth and Luke over the idea of calling for medical help. But the argument went on all day, and for several days thereafter. Why was everyone reluctant to do take him to a hospital? Why had they helped him up to this point if they were just going to let him die now?

Why?

**xxxxxxxx**

Day eight.

Sara had put her life at the university on hold. She wasn't teaching classes. She wasn't attending classes. With full understanding and approval of her dean and her faculty advisor, colleagues had taken over her instructional duties and her course work could be made up when – or if – she ever decided to pick up her quest for a PhD. If Grissom was gone, she though she'd never be able to generate any enthusiasm for it again. He was her reason to achieve. He was her rock, her support, her biggest fan. Without him, the underpinning of her world would be gone, along with her motivation and, quite frankly, her interest. She could talk about her enthusiasm for scientific achievement with him, and he would always understand and join her in the quest for knowledge. As a team, discovery was a thrill. Alone, it would be hollow. Who wants to watch a glorious sunrise with no one to share it?

She tried to help Nick with the search for the pickup truck that had carried Grissom away, but there really wasn't enough to keep two people occupied. So far, four police and two sheriff's departments had looked at records on all 11 large tire dealers within 50 miles of Grissom's accident.

Even though the records were computerized at all 11 stores, going through them consumed enormous chunks of time. Inventory records were easy enough to check for sales, but no one knew how far back to go. The tread-wear pattern in the molds Nick made suggested the tires had been used for a while, but weren't near the end of their lives. The Goodrich T/A all-weather, all-terrain tires were warrantied for 50,000 miles. Assuming a truck ran 15,000 miles a year, on average, that would cover a little more than three years. But since the tires had tread life remaining, the first search through inventory records was capped at three years.

Only three sets of the tires had been put on Dodge Ram Quad-Cabs with 160.3-inch wheelbases. One in Laughlin, one in Bullhead City, one in Kingman. The three current owners had made the purchases. All three had viable alibis for their trucks the night of the accident. None of the three had blood stains in the interior or the bed.

Next up had been the smaller dealers, where records tended not to be computerized and invoices had to be hand-checked, one at a time. There was no guarantee that some records hadn't been lost, or that one or more wouldn't be overlooked by a weary-eyed cop who just wanted to get home to a beer and dinner.

It didn't look promising.

**xxxxxxx**

In the first few days, the hunt for Grissom had been strictly local news. There was a brief story in the Laughlin _Times_ about a Las Vegas man missing after a bicycle accident in Pyramid Canyon. But wilderness accidents were so commonplace that no one followed up the initial story.

It was much bigger news in Las Vegas, of course, and the story was updated daily, including accounts of Grissom's life and his biggest cases, interviews with the sheriff and courthouse denizens who knew him. Only his closest colleagues declined to be interviewed. Their emotions were too raw, and their lives to full of the hunt for him.

Kingman, Arizona had a newspaper, the _Daily Miner_, but no local television outlets. The newspaper had no interest in early stories about Grissom's disappearance. He wasn't even close to being a local. But as the search grew wider and more desperate, the _DM_ did pick up an AP story that ran on the front page with a photo of the missing investigator.

The trouble was, only four people in all of Arizona knew the man in the photo was lying in a bed just outside Kingman, and none of the four read the _Daily Miner_.

**xxxxxxx**

Day 9

James Firth wandered into Short Cuts, the barbershop where he got his hair trimmed when he couldn't keep it out of his eyes any longer. Jack Gonzalez, the owner and the only barber in the place, had one client in his chair and another waiting.

"How're you doin', James," he said, looking up from the blond boy he was trimming up. "Ain't seen you in here in a while."

"Been busy," James said. "It got so hot so early this year, we can't keep up with the folks just figurin' out their AC isn't working."

Gonzalez smiled, his black hair, dark eyes and sun-weathered skin contrasting with very white teeth. "Well, take yourself a chair. Be with you in about 20."

"No rush," James said. "I need a rest."

James thumbed through the magazines on a small table beside him and found nothing of interest. He's read the same issue of "People" the last three times he'd been in. The hunting magazines didn't interest him. He had two freezers full of fresh kill. Neither did the car and truck publications. He got up and wandered over to another table, with other magazines. It sat just below a bulletin board that Jack kept crammed with fliers announcing local events, or items for sale by customers.

James did a double take when his eyes fell on a newspaper clipping, and the face that stared off the paper at him, smiling and healthy, was one he knew all too well. He had to stop his hands from shaking before he removed the pushpin holding the newsprint to the cork board and took it down to read it.

Unsteadily, he walked over to Jack.

"Where'd this come from?" he said, holding out the clipping.

Gonzalez glanced at it and nodded. "It was on the front page of the paper yesterday," he said. "You didn't see it?"

"Musta missed it," James said. "Why do you have it up on your board?"

"Well, there's lots of folks stop through her on their way to and from Vegas and Lake Mead," he said. "I figured somebody might spot him." He looked at James over his half glasses. "Why? You seen him?"

"Me, no," James said. "Just passin' time."

It took all the effort James could muster to stay in the shop until his hair was trimmed. When he'd paid Gonzalez, he headed straight for his Uncle Bill's house and called Luke, who, it turned out, was already there to help with the patient.

As luck would have it, the man had taken a serious turn for the worse.

**xxxxxxx**

Brass was seriously worried about Sara. He knew she wasn't eating; he was pretty sure she wasn't sleeping. She wouldn't leave the lab, cat napping instead on Grissom's office sofa, showering in the locker room, going home only to do a load of laundry.

She had no color. Her weight loss was noticeable in only a week and a half. And the circles under her eyes were so dark they looked like smeared black mascara. She was living on black coffee and vending machine popcorn.

She was just about to open the microwave to retrieve the latest bag when Brass snagged the door and pulled the bag away before she could get it. He tossed it across the break room.

She looked at him with weary eyes wide and bloodshot.

"You're going with me for a real meal, Sara," he told her firmly. He raised a finger to her lips when she started to protest. "No. Don't argue. I can't put you to bed and make you stay there until you sleep, but I can get some decent food into you. And if you resist me, well, we'll just keep sitting in the restaurant until you realize the only way you're going to get back to the lab is to put what's on your plate into your mouth, with chewing and swallowing to follow."

Her shoulders slumped. She was too tired to argue.

"I need to tell Nick where to find me," she said.

"Nick knows," Brass told her. "Nick learned all about cell phones, uh, last week, I think. He's a quick study, too. He's got your number and mine on speed dial. Let's go."

So they wound up at an upscale vegetarian place just off The Strip, where Sara ordered a cup of black bean soup.

"That it, Honey?" the waitress asked.

Sara nodded.

"No," Brass said. "That's not it. Bring her one of those baby spinach salads and a veggie omelet, too. And I'll have the same thing."

"You know I'm not going to eat all that," Sara said. "And if I try, I won't keep it down."

"I told you I was prepared to sit here for the rest of the week, didn't I?" Brass said.

Sara forced herself to smile, but when she looked up at Brass, he saw the tears running down her face. He started to reach over to brush them away, then stopped. He'd seen Grissom do that too many times. It wasn't his place to touch her.

"Where is he, Jim?" she said, her voice low and wrapped in sadness and defeat.

"I don't know, kiddo. I really don't know."

"What have we done that God is so mad at us?" she asked. "Why does it always seem just when we're truly happy that something comes along and wrecks our lives? We used to do it to each other. We're long past that. But the heartbreak doesn't come with an expiration date. It just keeps blindsiding us for no reason, over and over again."

Their soups and salads came then. Brass deliberately waited for Sara to start before he would, a way of pushing her without words. It worked. She should have been starving, but she ate slowly. Half spoons of soup, a leaf or two of spinach at a time. Between bites, she stared at the food without seeing it. If she was waiting for Jim to answer her questions, she didn't show it. She probably realized they were questions for which he had no answers.

She had eaten all of the soup and about half of the salad when the omelets came.

She looked at hers and frowned.

"I can't, Jim. No more."

"Just a little. Please, Sara, try. You've got to stay strong."

Just then Brass's phone rang. The caller ID said, "STOKES."

"Yeah," Brass said.

"Where are you?" Nick said, nearly breathless.

Brass told him.

"Sara's with you?"

"Yeah."

"Don't move. I'll be there in 15."

**xxxxxxx**

_He was alone and reveling in it._

_He was a man happy with his life. Contented with his lot. He had a wonderful, amazing, beautiful wife (Why suddenly couldn't he recall her name or what she looked like?) who fulfilled him and brought him joy. He felt strong, young and vigorous. And moments like this, when he could put his busy existence on pause and enjoy the solitude and beauty of nature, brought him serenity._

_The air carried the scent of perfume and crackling pine campfires._

_He stood, incongruously, next to his mountain bike in a lush green meadow dotted in profusion with wildflowers: the yellows of sweet-clover, golden pea, heartleaf arnica, balsam root and columbine, the purples of monkshood, lupine and larkspur, the brilliant pinks of alpine laurel, sweet vetch and Wood's rose, and a smattering of red Wyoming paintbrush. It never ceased to amaze him that flowers never clashed, regardless of their colors._

_The meadow rose at a gentle angle and disappeared above him into a lodgepole pine forest. Below him, the Firehole River ran a gentle, winding course, silently gliding by on the same plane as the meadow's edge, with no visible bank. He could barely make out the roar of the water coming from somewhere downstream as it ran through a narrow gorge, picked up speed and crashed over a rocky falls into a roiling pool before continuing its journey south._

_It was sunset in Yellowstone National Park, the sky a free-form painting of gray and purple and orange and pink and blue and yellow and red, one color blending into the next, constantly shifting and reshaping as the sun sank lower beyond the western mountains._

_How did he know this place? He thought he must be making it up in a dream. He didn't recall ever being here. But then he didn't recall anything anymore._

_In a heartbeat, everything changed._

_The evening mountain breeze, which should have been quite cool, even in early summer, blew blazing hot in his face. He tried to draw a deep breath and was slammed by an avalanche of pain. It started deep in his chest and radiated to his arms, his shoulders, his neck, his head._

_He sank to his knees and then stretched out on his back in the grass, lying down before he fell down. His breathing was too shallow and too fast. He felt his heart racing. He felt sweat pour off him._

_He realized then the colors in the sky were not the sunset but wildfire, raging out of the mountains, racing at him at incredible speed, incinerating everything in its path. The roaring he heard earlier had not been a waterfall; it had been the forest fire._

_He needed to escape. He looked for his bicycle, but it had disappeared. He willed himself to get up and try to outrun the flames, although he knew he couldn't. Still, he tried. His left leg kept buckling on him generating shockwaves of pain. A pine tree exploded and hurled a blazing branch at his head. He raised his left arm to protect himself and screamed in pain when the missile hit his elbow._

_Now the fire was leaping over his head, sparking everything around him._

_Flame, hot, hungry and angry, seared his body and burned his throat._

_He thought he could feel his eyes begin to melt._

_He couldn't draw a breath without agony. His lungs ceased working. His chest constricted._

_It was so hot._

_He fell again, and try as he might, he couldn't get up._

_He rested his face in the still-cool grass and let the heat and blackness of death sweep over him._


	8. Chapter 8

James burst into his uncle's house and found Cassie sitting at the kitchen table, fidgeting.

"Where's your dad and my brother?" he said.

"In the bedroom, trying to help the guy," she said. "He's really taken a bad turn."

"Now listen to me, Cassie. I want you to go out on the front porch. Sit under the fan and stay there until you hear from me."

"Why?"

"Cause I said to."

"You don't give me orders."

"Not usually. But this is for your own good, you understand? Out."

Luke heard the commotion and emerged from the bedroom.

"What the hell's goin' on?" he asked.

"I got to talk to you and Bill, privately," James said.

"So come in the bedroom."

"_Very_ privately."

Luke shook his head as if to say he didn't have time for this.

"Well, shit, Cassie, go on outside. This won't take long." Luke glanced back at his brother. "It better not take long."

She started to leave when Luke called her back.

"I got a better idea," he said pulling his keys from his pocket. "Take the truck and go to the 7-Eleven and bring us another two big bags of ice." He gave her the keys and 20 dollars and she skulked off.

Luke turned on James. "Now what the fuck's so important?"

James pointed back toward the bedroom. "That guy in there, he's a big-shot crime investigator from Vegas. They're huntin' everywhere for him. We are in deep shit."

Luke paled. "We better tell Bill."

James gasped when he walked into the bedroom and saw the man lying on the guest bed. His body was awash in sweat, salt-and-pepper hair matted to his scalp, drops of moisture clinging to his beard. His head rolled on his pillow, and his face contorted, as if he were suffering through nightmares. He was mumbling nonsense, totally out of his mind with a raging fever. His breath came so fast James thought the man might hyperventilate.

Zippered plastic bags of ice lay on against both sides of his neck, against the top of his shoulders. Others were jammed into his armpits, under his wrists, on his chest and in his groin, along and under his thighs and over his right ankle.

"He's delirious," Bill said. "Fever's 104 and rising. I'm trying to cool him down. I increased his antibiotics two days ago, but he just kept getting worse. He's got a hell of an infection somewhere, and I don't know how to attack it." He smacked his hands on his thighs and stood up. "_Damn it_, I told you boys that first night to drop him at a hospital. Now look what's happened."

"It's worse than you think," James said. "His name's Grissom. He's a hotshot crime investigator for the Clark County Sheriff's Office in Vegas. He disappeared in Pyramid Canyon that same day we were over there. The day we found him. Everybody's looking for him. We gotta get him outta here."

"Jesus," Bill said. "And where do you suggest we take him? We drop him off at the hospital now, and he gets well enough to talk, he knows my name. He knows Cassie. He knows you, Luke. We can't chance it."

"So what do you want us to do?" Luke asked.

"Just lemme think a minute," Bill said. "Lemme get a drink and think about it."

**xxxxxxx**

Twelve minutes after his phone call, Nick slid into the restaurant booth beside Sara.

"Got the SOBs," he said without preamble.

"What?" Brass said. Sara just turned and stared at Nick.

"You remember the DNA on the Jack Daniels bottle we found next to the dead elk?"

Sara and Brass nodded.

"Came back to the Brothers Blount of Henderson, big-game poachers," Brass said. "Except there are no Brothers Blount in Henderson."

"They moved," Nick said. "To Kingman, Arizona. Little independent tire dealer in Kingman…" he consulted his notes, "…uh, Sport Tires and More, usually deals in the low-end stuff. But the owner ordered a full set of the Goodrich T/As about two years ago for his cousin, Luke Blount, and mounted 'em on Luke's black Dodge Ram Mega-Cab. Gave him a family price. Said Luke's an AC contractor, in business with his brother James."

"Do we know where they live?" Sara asked.

"Got addresses on both of 'em, and on an uncle, a William Firth."

"Why's he important?" Sara asked.

"He used to be a doctor, a _medical_ doctor. Until his wife died and he tried to find peace at the bottom of a bourbon bottle."

"What are we sitting here for?" Brass said.

"It's normally about a two-hour drive to Kingman," Nick said as they all got up and waited for Brass to throw some money on the table. I figure with lights and siren, we can be at the Arizona border in an hour. The Arizona state police will meet us there and escort us in the rest of the way. Local cops will take the two brothers' homes. We'll help take the uncle's. Given his past profession, that seems to be the most likely place to find Grissom."

Nick didn't add: "If he's still alive."

**xxxxxxx**

Firth's drinking and thinking were interrupted 30 minutes later by Cassie's return bearing two 10-pound sacks of ice.

"Some of those bags in the bedroom will need refreshing," Firth said. He made no move to help but replenished his drink, instead.

Luke threw one bag in the freezer and went into the bedroom with Cassie to add ice to the bags surrounding Grissom.

"What with the blood and the water, this mattress is ruined," Cassie said. "It's all soaked through the pads." She looked up at Luke as they busied themselves with the ice. "You gonna tell me what's going on?"

"No."

"Why? I have a right to know. This is my house, too."

"It's for your own good, Cassie. You ain't had no real part in this, at least not in the decisions we made. The less you know, the less trouble you're gonna be in."

Cassie stood up straight. "You know who he is, don't you?"

"Never mind what I know," Luke said. "Just go back outside. If it gets too hot, you can sit in my truck and run the AC."

Bill wandered in then, passing Cassie on her way out, and took his patient's temperature again. He shook his head. "It's still goin' up," he said.

"How high can it go?" James asked.

"Rule of thumb, in a normal healthy adult it gets potentially lethal at 104.9. He's about 104.2 now. Since he's so sick, he could have reached lethal for him already."

"Okay, look Bill, you got any bright ideas?"

Firth shook his head.

"Then I say we send Cassie off on another errand, load this guy in the back of my truck again, drive him way out in the desert and dump him," Luke said. "The sun'll take care of finishing him in a couple of hours, if that long. And we'll be clear."

"That's cold-blooded murder," Firth said, slightly slurring his words.

"If he stays here, can you save him?" Luke asked.

"Probably not."

"Then what's the argument?"

"Oh, shit. Oh, double-double shit," Firth said. He returned to the living room and sagged back into his chair. When he grabbed the bottle again, he didn't bother with the glass.

**xxxxxxx**

It took a while to convince Cassie to leave again. She had a bad feeling about it. Her instincts said if she left now the sick guy in the back bedroom would be gone when she returned, and chances were nobody would ever see him again. She wondered again who he was. Her cousins and her father obviously knew, though she had no clue how they found out.

She didn't even know the man, had hardly passed the time of day with him after that first time he woke up. But she had feelings for him. She felt badly for him. He had a life somewhere, and someone who loved him. Judging from that one dream she witnessed, he must love her back a great deal. Yet as things stood, they'd probably never see one another again, and it broke her heart to think about it. She liked love stories with happy endings. She fantasized about someday living one of her own.

She was pretty sure her cousins planned to dump him somewhere in the desert where his body might never be found. Those last hours of pain and loneliness and despair would be unbearable for him. But what about her, his wife? She would spend the rest of her days wondering what became of him, whether he was alive or dead, whether he suffered.

Cassie put her head in her hands and cried for a man whose name she didn't even know.

Then she got the keys for her father's car and left. She didn't even go to the patient's bedroom to say good-bye. She didn't think she could handle that.


	9. Chapter 9

"Okay, get him up under the armpits," Luke told James. "We'll drag him off the bed and outside and pull him into the back seat of the truck, just like we did the first time."

"What about the casts and the bandages?" James said.

Luke looked at him as if he were crazy. "We're takin' him out in the desert to die. I'm not real worried about bangin' up his bones."

Grissom, clad only in sweat shorts, screamed in pain when they slid him off the bed and his broken leg cracked against the floor. He wasn't conscious, but he felt it nonetheless.

Firth stumbled back into the room.

"You can't leave those casts on him," he said. "There's records of me buying the stuff to make them. I'm only agreeing to your plan so none of this comes back down on us. The casts have got to go."

"So give us the tools to cut 'em off, and we'll do that after we dump him," Luke said.

Firth went off to get what they would need.

When they grabbed Grissom under the arms again, he began to wake up.

"Maybe we can get him to stand up if we support him so he doesn't have to put weight on the broken leg," James said.

Luke shrugged. It was worth a try. Helping him walk would be easier than dragging him.

They got Grissom upright and out the front door. He began asking muttering incoherently. They assured him they were taking him to get medical help.

They were about to start down the front steps when they heard the sirens and saw two state police cars and a sand-colored Chevy Tahoe bearing down on the house. Too stunned to act rationally, Luke and James both released Grissom, who reached out and embraced a thick post supporting the porch roof. Somehow, he managed to hold himself upright as he squinted against the sun and watched the police vehicles close the distance at 85 miles an hour. An ambulance trailed behind them. Grissom closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the pillar. He had no idea what was going on.

Four troopers were out of their units first, guns drawn. Four more people in civilian clothes got out of the Tahoe. The eight approached the porch cautiously.

Cassie chose that moment to return and watched the scene, transfixed. Her eyes were drawn to a tall, slender brunette, maybe a few years older than she. The woman would have been beautiful if she didn't appear so exhausted.

Cassie got out of the car and ran toward the front porch of her home.

"Stay right there," a trooper warned her, but she continued until she reached Grissom and inserted her shoulders under his left arm to help him remain standing. He gasped for breath. She noticed his neck. His carotid artery flexed way too fast. His heart had to be working overtime.

She could feel his intense heat through her clothes, feel the slick sweat from his bare back and chest on her skin. At a different time, in a different place, under different conditions, she would have found it totally erotic and arousing. Now, it just felt desperate.

"There's nobody armed," Cassie said.

It didn't seem to matter to the cops.

Cassie's eyes returned to the dark-haired woman. She was trying to get to the porch but was being restrained by an older man with a badge hanging from his jacket pocket. They were close enough now that Cassie could see the combination of joy and terror in the woman's eyes. Her lips moved, but Cassie couldn't hear her words.

Two troopers frisked Luke and James while a third held a gun on them. The fourth emerged from the house.

"It's clear," he said. "The doc's inside, but he's too drunk to be a threat."

The cop from the Tahoe released the brunette, who sprinted toward the porch.

Cassie both heard and felt the gasp from the man leaning against her shoulders.

"Sara," he whispered. "You came."

Cassie flashed on the realization that something of this man's memory had returned. But the thought evaporated as she struggled to keep him from sliding from her grasp as he began to lose consciousness again. She wasn't strong enough to hold him, and he collapsed down the stairs into the dust. He came to rest under the blazing sun, unconscious, on his back, with his encased left leg resting on the bottom step. The woman bent over him. Cassie saw that her wedding band matched his. The woman began to cry, her hands gently smoothing his face and his hair as she repeated his name over and over.

"Gil. Gil. Gil."

**xxxxxxx**

One of the troopers talked into the radio and the ambulance roared forward.

Three EMTs jumped out and swarmed Grissom.

They begged Sara to give them room to work, and Brass helped pull her back from the horribly battered body that was her husband.

She saw one of the medics lift the bloody gauze from Grissom's left breast and she recoiled from the sight.

"Oh, sweet Jesus," the young man said, and Sara seconded the thought. The puncture in Grissom's chest was swollen, inflamed and raw, leaking blood and pus. Blood leaked from the corner of Grissom's mouth.

The medics checked the taping around his abdomen and back.

"He's had ribs broken," one of them said. "That last fall must have punctured a lung."

"My God," said the female supervisor, "his temp's 104.4."

"Oh, fuck," the youngest said. "We don't have time to treat him here. We've got to scoop and run."

"Get him on the bus and prepare to intubate him," the supervisor said. "Break out the ice packs and call the ER for support."

"I want to go with him," Sara said.

"Not possible," the supervisor said. "We need room to work around him. Sorry."

"I'm going with him," Sara said, her voice low and absolutely determined.

The supervisor turned and took Sara by the shoulders. "I know who he is. I know who you are. I know what's at stake here. I can see what he's been through. He has a long, long battle ahead of him, or a very short one. The odds say he won't get out of this alive. Please, stay out of the way and let us try to save him."

Sara swallowed back her emotion. Her next words came almost as a whisper. "And if you can't save him, who will hold his hand as he dies?"

The medic looked stricken. Her shock turned to sadness. Then she nodded. "Get in. But when we tell you to get out of the way, duck."

Sara nodded her consent and gratitude.

**xxxxxxx**

She held Grissom's hand in the ambulance, just as he had once held hers aboard a helicopter. She stroked his face to the extent the oxygen mask would permit. She talked to him softly, encouraging him, making promises, loving him.

It broke her heart that he didn't open his eyes when she asked him to, didn't squeeze her hand when she begged him.

One of the EMTs pulled lightly at her shoulders, indicating she needed to move back for a moment. They were covering Grissom in ice packs, much as she had once been covered, but hers were meant to combat heat stroke caused by exposure. He was battling a brutal fever that had now spiked high enough to kill him. Somewhere within him an infection raged out of control. Unless it could be managed quickly, he would lose this fight.

As she watched the medics at work, she wondered what would become of the sorry foresome they had left under state trooper guard back at the Firth house. Luke and James Blount were dead-certain candidates for prison time. In addition to the poaching rap they faced, the feds likely would bring interstate kidnapping charges. Both Nevada and Arizona could charge them with reckless endangerment, and if Grissom died, manslaughter or murder two. Reckless endangerment was a sure bet against Firth, as well. Sara almost hoped prosecutors would give Cassie a pass. She was such a sad case: intimidated by dominating male family members, coerced into cooperation, damned to give up her own life to take care of an alcoholic father. She had suffered enough.

Sara glanced out the ambulance's back windows. The sand-colored Tahoe was right behind them, lights flashing, siren screaming. She had learned they were taking Grissom to a hospital in Kingman to try to stabilize him. If that could be done, he probably would be airlifted to Desert Palm in Las Vegas.

Sara tried to recall how much time members of the team had accumulated in beds at Desert Palm Medical Center. She and Grissom had logged a lot of those hours themselves. She pushed the exercise away as too depressing.

When the EMT nodded, Sara moved close to Grissom again, took his hand again, began talking to him again.

And still, she got no response at all.

She wondered if he was even self-aware any more. One of the medics had mentioned coma, not intending Sara to hear it.

Once again she considered turning to prayer. If she was right, and there was no supreme being, perhaps Grissom would hear her thoughts, somehow.

That would be enough.


	10. Chapter 10

Grissom had been in surgery for nine hours and 40 minutes. Two hours into the ordeal, the lead doctor had come out of the OR to brief them on a litany of Grissom's injuries: severe concussion, broken left fibula, broken left radius, two broken ribs on the left and two on the right, punctured left lung, severe blood loss with some internal bleeding caused by his fall at the Firth home. All these things might have been survivable, even _en masse_.

"Our real battle is with infection," Dr. Roger Bly told them. "The wound in the left chest was caused by a sizeable shard of broken glass. It penetrated the chest wall and lodged near his heart. I have no idea where it came from."

"He was in the Lake Mead Rec Area, riding his bike," Brass said. "I suppose it could have been a piece of road debris thrown off somebody's tire."

Bly nodded. "What it is and how it got there are not my biggest concerns," he said. "The overt damage done by the glass wasn't that severe, relatively speaking. What the shard of glass carried into the patient's body is what's trying to kill him. A bacteria is at the core of all this. It got into his system and has affected every nick, cut and scrape he sustained in the fall. Most critically, it's affected his heart."

"How?" Sara asked. Her mouth was desert-dry and she was having trouble generating saliva.

"You all may know, you all probably do know, there are membranes surrounding our organs," Bly said. "The membrane that surrounds the heart is called the pericardium. When the pericardium becomes inflamed by a bacterial pathogen, the result is pericarditis. It is a rather easy situation to treat and control with the administration of antibiotics."

"Then Grissom's gonna be fine?" Nick said.

Bly tipped his head, a gesture of contradiction. "If left untreated, or misdiagnosed and _mis_treated, as it was in this case, simple pericarditis can escalate. Fluid begins to build within the pericardial sac, constricting the heart and causing severe pain radiating to the neck, the shoulders, the back, the chest, and so on. This is called purulent pericarditis. Even with proper treatment, the mortality rate at this point is between 40 and 75 percent."

Sara gasped. Bly wasn't finished.

"If the situation escalates further, into suppurative pericarditis, the mortality rate approaches 100 percent."

Sara felt Brass put an arm around her waist to support her.

"And this is where Grissom is?" he asked.

"He appears to be hovering in stage two, on the edge of stage three," Bly said. "I'm sorry. If he'd been brought in immediately, he'd be home right now feeling pretty good."

He paused, and Sara sensed there was more. She didn't think she could take any more.

"You know," Bly continued, looking directly at Sara. "I know Jim Firth. He used to be a good doctor, and I know his intentions were to help your husband. But everything he did was wrong. Little things. Big things. All mistakes that arise from not having current medical knowledge. Like taping broken ribs. We don't do that anymore because it can lead to serious pulmonary complications. Leaving that damned piece of glass in him. I don't know why he didn't put Dr. Grissom in a hospital immediately. This tragedy was so avoidable."

Sara swallowed hard. "So what are you going to do to help him?" Sara asked. She heard a demand for action in her tone.

"We're prepping him for surgery now. We'll insert a tube to drain the pericardial fluid and then begin direct intrapericardial injections of 250,000 units of Streptokinase."

"Did the antibiotics he got from that pseudo doctor do him any good?" Brass said.

Bly shook his head. "Not much. It was the wrong antibiotic in doses way too small. And the delay in getting the proper treatment, well, you know."

"What are his chances?" Sara asked.

"Poor," Bly said. "Approaching zero."

Sara felt Brass increase his support as she sagged. She accepted his help to a chair.

"So you're giving up," she said softly.

"Does it sound like we're giving up?" Bly said. "We're going to fight like hell for him."

Sara tried to smile but couldn't make those facial muscles work.

"But there's no hope," she said.

"I think we need to be realistic," Bly said. "But we never forget one thing. The only force that trumps hope is death. And we're not there yet."

**xxxxxxx**

When Grissom was settled into a bed in the Cardiac ICU, Sara was permitted to have 10 minutes with him. Nothing had changed. Not his condition. Not his odds.

_What odds? What was less than zero?_

A respirator breathed for him. One IV hydrated him. Another fed him. Another dripped a medical cocktail into his arm. A catheter ran from under the thin hospital blanket covering his lower body to a urine collection bag hooked low on his bed. Electronic pickups blossomed from patches dotting his body. Monitors beeped in cadence with the hiss of the respirator. And a tube that poked out of his chest worked to drain the hundreds of milliliters of pus that had pooled around his heart.

Sara groaned for him. She entwined her fingers through his and bowed her head.

"Oh, Griss, how did we come to this?" she whispered. "Why did we come to this? Everything about us was so right. So much promise. So much to look forward to." She felt a tear track down her face, saw it splash onto his arm. She willed herself not to cry. She wanted to stay strong and positive for him. If he could hear her, she didn't want him to hear sobs. She would cry in private.

She saw the heavy sterile bandage over his left breast and laid a gentle had on it. This was where it started, with a fucking piece of litter. Somebody drinks a beer, carelessly tosses the bottle out the window. It shatters on the pavement, begins to collect bacteria. And the next thing you know, it gets launched into her husband's chest and leaves him lying on the razor thin edge between life and eternity.

"Don't leave," Sara whispered to him. "I need you to stay. We haven't had our life. It's not your time. I love you."

_It's not your time._

_It's not your time._

_I love you._

A nurse entered and quietly told Sara it was time for her to leave.

"I'm not going," Sara said.

"You have to, Mrs. Grissom. "He needs to rest."

"I really don't think I'm bothering him."

"It's the rules."

"I don't care."

"I'll get the doctor."

**xxxxxxx**

When the nurse found Dr. Bly, he was talking to Brass. The nurse explained the problem.

Bly shook his head and started to excuse himself. Brass stopped him with a hand on the arm.

"Let me tell you something about Sara," he said. "If she doesn't want to go, it's a fight you won't win if you try for the next five years."

"We could have security take her out," Bly said.

"But you won't."

Bly sighed deeply. "Of course not."

He turned to the nurse.

"Have an orderly put a cot in there," he said. "Her presence isn't going to hurt him any more than he's already been hurt. And maybe it'll help." He shrugged. "It's a stupid rule, anyway."

**xxxxxxx**

**A/N: **I know I've been posting so far without author's notes, and I intended to continue that, but I need to tell everyone something. There are two chapters remaining after this. One short and the other quite long. I hadn't intended to post everything today, but I'm going to because I won't be able to tomorrow. Rather than make you all wait until late Wednesday, I thought I'd just dump the rest on your heads today. I hope you don't mind. D;-


	11. Chapter 11

The next 24 hours changed nothing. The ventilator continued to pump life-saving breath into Grissom. He was able to draw only three breaths a minute on his own. The ventilator was doing the rest.

Score: Ventilator 9, Grissom 3.

Sara stared at the readout, willing it to shift.

"It's the bottom of the ninth, Gil," she whispered. "Time to get back in the game."

She started to say, "do or die," and bit it off.

"Please, honey, you need to start getting better." She held his right hand in both of hers and touched her forehead to his knuckles. "Come back to me."

She raised her head when she heard someone come into the room behind her. It was Bly. He was scanning Grissom's chart and scowling.

"Hi, Sara," he said when he looked up. "You getting along okay?" He nodded at the cot.

"Yes, thank you," she said. "It was nice of you to do that."

"Captain Brass made it abundantly clear that when it comes to your husband's welfare, or perhaps I should say your perception of his welfare, arguing with you was a losing proposition."

Sara smiled a little. "That sounds like Jim."

"What sounds like me?" Brass asked as he rolled up at the door. "Never mind. I probably don't want to know." He glanced at the monitors. "How's he doing?"

"That's what I just came to talk to Sara about," Bly said. "Basically, not much changed. The good news is he's still alive. The better news is his temperature has dropped to 102.3."

"Does the lower temperature mean he stands a better chance to survive?" Sara asked.

"Not really," Bly said. "The fact that there's a temperature at all means there's still a serious infection. And you need to know, Sara, that even if he wakes up, there's a chance of heart and brain damage, and it could be severe. All his organs could have been adversely affected."

"Because of the infection?" she said.

"That and the hyperthermia the infection caused. I don't know how long he ran the very high fever, but basically it cooked him from the inside out."

"I might be able to help you a little bit there," Brass said. "I just met with the FBI. They're taking over the case as an interstate kidnapping. Cassandra Firth told them Gil had been running a fever when the Blout brothers brought him to her house. It began to spike about three days later, though her father didn't seem really concerned until it got over 103. She said that happened the day before we got to him."

Bly ran his hand through his hair. "So it was up there a good two days," he said. "That's, uh, unfortunate."

"They did have him packed in bags of ice for the final 10 or 12 hours, so his temperature might have come down marginally and then gone up again," Brass said. "Or is that wishful thinking?"

"Maybe. Not necessarily," Bly said. "It might have helped temporarily. But the infection wasn't slaked because he wasn't getting the right antibiotics."

Sara stood up to stretch her legs. She continued to hold Grissom's hand in hers.

"So the bottom line is, you don't really know," she said.

"Right," Bly said. "I thought you should be aware of the possibilities. Which raises another question. Does Dr. Grissom have a living will?"

"Yes," Sara said. "And I have his power of attorney. But not with me. It's all back in Las Vegas."

"I'll need them," Bly said.

"He specified 'no heroic measures,' no resuscitation if there was no hope for improvement," she said, and she felt her eyes burn. She didn't want to be having this conversation.

"We can't follow his wishes if we don't have the documents," Bly said.

"There's one other thing," Brass said. "Cassandra said Grissom completely lost his memory. He couldn't remember anything before waking up in the back seat of her cousin's truck well after the accident."

"He remembered me," Sara said. "When we found him I heard him say my name right before he collapsed."

"That might be a good sign, or it might be temporary," Bly said, "It's one more thing we'll have to deal with down the road. I hope we get to that point."

Sara felt lost.

"What I came to tell you, Sara, is the rest of us have to go back to Vegas," Brass said. "But Catherine plans on coming back. If you tell me how to get my hands on those documents, I'll give them to Catherine to bring down in the morning."

"Thanks," she said. "I'll write it out for you."

Her breath caught in her throat. Why did she suddenly feel that once the documents were in Dr. Bly's hands, Grissom's fate was sealed?

The conversations about his death would cease to be hypothetical.

All it would take is one hand reaching out to turn off one machine.

A few final breaths from the bed, and then … nothing.

Once the mechanism of Grissom's death was in place, it would become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Sara pushed past the two men then and went out to the monitoring area where she sagged back against a wall and began to cry.

Brass moved to wrap his arms around her, but she moved away. The feeling of being lost compounded itself. She had no clean clothes beyond two changes of underwear she'd brought down with some toiletries. No place to shower. Her closest friends were leaving. Nothing about this city, this hospital was familiar to her. And the next time she saw home, it would be to bury her husband.

She felt as if she would strangle on her own tears. The despair simply overwhelmed her.

She started when she felt a new hand on her arm. It was Catherine.

"I'm only going back to get some clothes for me and to make arrangements for Lindsey," she said. "I have every intention of coming right back down here. I've already informed Ecklie. It's no problem at all to stop by your place and pick up some things for you. I'll have a motel room, here, and you're welcome to shower there, change there, even sleep there when you feel you need a break from here. We'll just swap off. One of us will always be at his side, you or me. We _will _get through this Sara, and no one will tell you to let him go until you decide it's time."

Sara let herself sag into a chair and fought for composure.

"It was one of the things he insisted on when we got married," she said. "He wouldn't do it until the living will and power of attorney were finished. He was so afraid about the difference in our ages, that he would get old and infirm or sick, and become a burden on me. That I would somehow become emotionally and financially saddled with caring for his … his shell. That's how he put it. 'I don't want you ever tied down to my shell.' I hated even talking about it. He forced me to."

"He was right, honey," Catherine said. "Gil Grissom is a very wise man."

Sara managed to calm herself enough to ask, "How will the lab function with you and Gil all gone at the same time?"

She heard Catherine chuckle. "Ecklie might actually have to get back in the field."

She realized Catherine's hand still rested on her arm. She patted it.

"I need to write out some things for Jim, then I've got to get back to Gil," she said. "Thank you for everything."

Sara wrote down the security code to the house so Brass could get in and noted the location of their living wills and powers of attorney in Grissom's desk. She let Brass hug her before he left.

"You know if you need me, I'm a phone call away," he said. "I can be here in two hours or less. And I'll call you often."

**xxxxxxx**

The next day Grissom's temperature dropped below 100.

And he made some small headway in his contest with the respirator.

Ventilator 8, Grissom 4.

When the lab technician arrived to draw her daily round of blood, Sara saw that she took twice the amount she had on previous days.

When Sara asked why, the technician told her some additional tests had been ordered.

"What kind of tests?" Sara asked.

"I don't know, ma'am," the tech said. "Best if you talk to his doctor."

Sara did exactly that when Bly came in 90 minutes later.

"We're running additional work on his liver and kidney function, among other things, to help us assess the extent of damage," he said.

"If any," Sara added.

"Yes, if any," he replied.

The way he looked at her told Sara he suspected she might be in denial.

"What?" she said. "You're not going to try to tell me nothing has changed, right? His temperature is dropping toward normal, he's taking one more breath a minute on his own than he was yesterday. The fever isn't killing him any more."

"No, that's true," Bly said. "But cascading organ failure is still a distinct possibility. Breathing, along with other basic life functions like heartbeat and blood pressure, are the job of the brain stem. Your husband can't survive taking four breaths a minute on his own. If he doesn't get a lot better, and soon, it means the brain stem has been compromised, and he won't get any better. Ever. Then it's only a matter of time until he suffers heart failure."

Bly put his hands on Sara's shoulders and looked her straight in the eyes.

"Once your friend gets back with his living will, you'll have to make a decision on how long he would want you to wait for his condition to improve."

Sara felt the tears well in her eyes.

"It's not time," she said, more of a prayer than a statement.

"No, Sara, it isn't," Bly said. "Not yet. But you have to prepare yourself."

Bly removed himself from Sara and bent over Grissom. Sara didn't see what the doctor did, but she started and her eyes went wide when Grissom suddenly moved his legs.

"Oh my God, look what he did," she said, ready to rejoice.

Bly straightened up. "He didn't do that. I did. Just a test."

"What does it mean?

"There's still brain stem activity."

"Hi." Catherine's voice. Bly and Sara both turned. She held a white, heavy paper envelope. Sara could see the phrase, "Living Will," printed in gothic type on the face. Catherine held it out to Sara. Sara didn't want to touch it. She inclined her head toward Bly, and Catherine moved her hand in front of the doctor. He took the envelope and checked the contents.

"It's pretty straight-forward," he said. "I'll have someone put it in his records."

He glanced at Sara. "You okay with this?"

"Not really," she said.

He nodded.

"I know."

**xxxxxxx**

**A/N:** That was the next-to-last chapter. Chapter 12 is long and final. I shall post it sometime before the end of my day. I just want to tell all of you how much I appreciate you reading it and all of your comments. j


	12. Chapter 12

Sara couldn't sleep that night. At some point, she gave up trying.

Despite her strongest efforts to push them away, her imagination kept creating scenarios for the end of Grissom's life. Scenarios that forced her to sign the papers that would prompt doctors to turn off the ventilator, leaving the man she loved to gasp desperately for breaths he would never breathe and, finally, to cease struggling. Scenarios where she sat at his bedside, holding his hand, telling him she would be all right, that he could leave now because he shouldn't have to fight and suffer any more.

Would she be able to do it, if it came to that? Did she have that kind of strength? Could she grant Gil that one final wish, even though he wouldn't be able to tell her, yes, it was the right thing to do?

Her doubts haunted her.

She turned her head and her eyes fell on the respirator readout. Her imagination morphed the numbers into the ultimate final score, the outcome no one could change:

Ventilator 12, Grissom 0.

Her cot lay alongside his bed. The fingers of her left hand entwined those of his right. She spoke to him nonstop, and she no longer even attempted to resist crying. If he could hear the extent of her pain, perhaps he would come back to comfort her.

She would give anything to feel his arms around her again, his fingers in her hair.

_Gil, can you hear me? I need you. I love you. Please. Can you find your way back?_

She sighed.

_Yes, I can. I'm here._

Sara froze, and in that instant, she was sure she felt his hand close a little tighter around hers.

She felt herself stop breathing. Her abdominal muscles clenched and she sat straight up just as the door to the room burst open and two nurses charged inside.

"Page Dr. Bly," the duty nurse said, and the other left to obey.

The remaining nurse turned to Sara.

"I need you to get up, Honey, and move the cot so we can get in beside him on that side."

"What's going on?" Sara asked.

"See for yourself," the nurse said and nodded toward the respirator readout.

Ventilator 1, Grissom 11.

**xxxxxxx**

He opened his eyes a few hours later, just as dawn was turning the Arizona sky blue-black outside the window of his room. He looked as if he wanted to try to say something, but Dr. Bly put a finger over his lips.

"Don't try to talk," he said. "You've been on a respirator for days. Your throat is going to be very sore for a while."

Grissom thought for a moment, his eyes darting around the room, landing on one person after another, one piece of machinery after another and, finally, on Sara.

Gingerly, he turned to look at her more directly. And against his doctor's orders, he spoke.

"I should know you," he said in a voice both weak and raspy, barely above a whisper.

Now she couldn't hold back the tears. And she couldn't speak. She just nodded.

"I should remember," he said. "I don't."

"You will," she said.

He closed his eyes then and went back to sleep.

Sara looked at Bly in concern.

"It's all right," the doctor said. "He's sleeping. Sleep will help."

"He called me by name back at the Firth house."

"I don't know what to tell you about that," Bly said. "It's hard to predict the course of amnesia."

"But Gil is better over all, right? And him memory will come back at some point?"

"Amnesia is better than brain death," he said. "Some things will come back to him. Maybe everything. It's way too early to tell."

"I just want him to remember us," Sara said.

**xxxxxxx**

Two days later Grissom was airlifted back to Las Vegas. He was weak and groggy, and still he remembered nothing.

After two weeks of recuperation, physical and occupational therapy and dozens of tests, Sara was allowed to take him home. Except for his memory, he seemed to have emerged from his ordeal with no permanent damage. Bly had stayed in touch with Sara by phone, still not believing Grissom had fared so well.

"It's one for the medical journals," he said. "By the way, I FedExed those legal documents back to you. With any luck, you'll never have to use them again."

Nick brought Hank home the day after Grissom got there, and the dog had to be restrained from leaping on sofa and seriously jostling his master.

"Good-looking dog," Grissom said. "What's his name?"

Life was nothing if not awkward. Grissom had been switched to a walking cast on his leg and a brace on his arm. But he wasn't anywhere near fully mobile. Since he had no memory of Sara or their life together, her determination to help him shower and dress embarrassed him.

She refused to embarrass him further by sharing his bed, so she slept in the smaller of their two guest rooms. He objected, but she told him he needed some privacy. He also needed quiet, and she was a restless sleeper. But she insisted he leave the master bedroom door open in case he needed to call her.

Grissom returned to work, though not to the field. Everyone hoped if he hung around the office, observing procedures, contributing where he could, something of what he had known would come back to him. And it did. At first he asked a lot of questions, but after doing a procedure under supervision once, he found he owned the process again, as fully as he had prior to the accident. There was no context to the regained memories, but the knowledge was there.

Recognition of his colleagues came back more slowly. They took a lot of time reminding him of events and experiences they shared. Some were familiar to him, and those triggered additional memories. The team tried to keep it light, but when something Catherine said triggered his memories of Warrick Brown, he had to excuse himself and go outside to be alone with the cascading emotions.

He got stronger. His wounds healed. The brace came off his arm first, and a few days later the cast came off his leg. He wasn't allowed to use crutches because his orthopedist didn't want him putting that much pressure on his left arm. So he used a cane. A week later, when he abandoned that, he found he could walk with only the slight limp. And that would disappear with time.

The memories of his professional life gradually formed up around him again, as vivid as before the accident. Even the parts that involved Sara, the professional criminalist. But the parts that were Sara, the friend, the lover the wife, the most important parts, continued to elude him.

A month after he returned home, he took her out for an elegant dinner on one of their nights off.

They talked about nothing serious until the coffee came. Then Grissom said, "Tell me about us."

He could see in Sara's eyes the abrupt question startled her, maybe frightened her a little.

Why?" she asked.

"Because we hardly ever talk about that, about us, and it's troubling me. It's as if you don't want to talk about us."

She shook her head and put her hand over his on the tablecloth.

"It's not that. I'm afraid if I tell you everything, you'll be able to pretend to remember, but you won't really. And that will diminish what we had and what we were. Whatever it was that bound us together will become something known, but not something experienced. An awareness but not an emotion. We can't settle for that."

"But I need to know. I want to know."

"You do know," she said. "We're married."

"Okay, let me rephrase. I know, but I want to feel."

"What do you want to feel?"

"Us. What did we like to do? I see DVDs and CDs at the house. So we must have liked movies and music. How did Hank come into our lives, and why in the world did we name him that? Did we plan to have children? What, um, what were we like in bed?"

Sara carefully folded her napkin and placed it beside her plate. She lowered her eyes and sighed. She had seen anguish in his eyes.

He leaned across the table toward her. "Why won't you tell me?"

"Because it's too painful to think about what might never be again," she said softly.

_Even though I think about it every waking moment…_

He waited.

"We fell in love the first time we ever met, a long time ago in San Francisco," she said, finally. You were teaching an advanced forensics class on bugs, and I was one of your students. When it ended, I stayed in San Francisco, where my career was, and you came back to Las Vegas, to your career. A few years later you asked me to come here to conduct a special investigation, and I never left. To say the next years were rocky for us is a real understatement. But when we finally worked it out, fully understood and trusted one another, we got married. And it was wonderful."

"_Was_ being the operative word, I take it."

She didn't answer. She avoided his eyes. She didn't want him to see the sadness in hers.

"We were wonderful together, no matter what we were doing," she said. "We were especially great in bed." She heard her voice crack.

He didn't say another word to her. Not as he paid the bill. Not as they walked to the car. Not as they drove home. He took Hank for a brief walk, and when he returned, she had undressed and was wearing her claret satin robe, sitting on the sofa, staring off into their past. He sat beside her and took her hands.

"Show me," he said.

She looked at him, not understanding.

"Show me," he repeated. "Show me what was so wonderful."

"I … I don't know if I can," she said. "We each knew instinctively what the other wanted. We rarely said anything. I'm afraid it would lose something in the translation if I choreographed it."

He sighed deeply. She saw his disappointment. He let go of her hands and stood up.

"I think I need a drink," he said, walking into the kitchen. "Can I get you something?"

_Stop this. Now!_

"Yes," she said.

She knew she couldn't let this opportunity pass. If he wanted a demonstration, it was a demonstration he would get.

She stood quickly, caught up with him, grabbed his shirt and pulled him into an embrace at the same time she pushed him up against the refrigerator. She turned her head up. She put a hand behind his head and pulled him down into a kiss that began gently and sweetly, until he opened his lips tentatively and she took full advantage of the opening. Their tongues touched and then caressed. He was exploring, testing, tasting, and she was patient with him, trying to ignore the fire he generated in her.

When they broke the kiss his eyes caught hers, and his look alone stoked her desire hotter. His stare ignited her skin wherever it fell, and when his gaze returned to hers, she thought it was the most intimate eye sex she'd ever experienced.

He pulled her in for the next kiss, and if he had been tentative before, he was supremely confident now. He reached down and loosened the sash on her robe. When it fell open, he ran his hands across her back and let them settle at her waist. She slipped the sash out of its loops and put it in her pocket. She loosened his tie and pocketed it, too, then ripped his shirt open and unfastened the buttons at his wrists. She pushed it off his shoulders and he shrugged out of it. She caressed his back and his shoulders and his chest. He pulled back to look at her. He slowly pushed the robe over her shoulders, and it fell to the floor. She saw him fighting to remember and appreciating what he saw.

He slipped his fingers beneath her bra and pushed it up and over her head, not even bothering with the clasps. He almost leered at the view. He cupped her breasts in his hands and began to stroke her nipples as he lowered himself to her neck, to the exact place he had discovered years ago to be one of the most erogenous spots on her body. Sara wondered if he remembered the spot or just made a lucky guess. She decided at this very moment, she didn't exactly care. He feathered it with his lips, caressed it with his tongue and then blew softly on the wet spot. She shivered hard.

He took a step back then and caught her eyes again. He cocked his head toward the bedroom. She stooped quickly and picked up her robe, then took his hand and let him lead her there, back to their bed for the first time in forever.

She tossed her robe to the far side of the bed, out of the way.

He slipped out of his shoes off and kissed her again, a long, searing gesture of passion out of control. When they separated, his hungry eyes roamed over her, his hands examining everything he could find, pausing at her vulva, cupping her gently and feeling the moisture that had soaked through her panties.

"I did that to you?" he asked.

"I'd like to think you did it _for _me," she replied.

He pulled her into another blistering kiss and lowered her to the bed. His mouth returned to her neck. His lips and tongue explored her shoulders, lingering at the pressure points there then continuing down to her erect nipples. His tongue traced a path around, under and over her right breast but never contacted the areola. She squirmed under him, sensations ripe, desire mounting by the second. For a moment, she lost feeling in her hands and had to flex them to get it back.

When he finally captured the nipple between his teeth, she groaned her pleasure. She wasn't having to explain anything to him, or ask him for anything. He was totally getting where she wanted him to be. He repeated his routine on her left breast, prolonging it, if anything, and then let his lips and tongue work their way down to her navel, across her abdomen and down the inside of her left thigh. She knew where this was going and reveled in it, spreading her legs to give him easier access. When he reached a point just above her knee, he transferred his attention to her right thigh and began his trip north to her labia.

He stripped off her panties and used his fingers to spread her lips, drank in the sight of her and began teasing her with his tongue, savoring the taste of her. Her hips rose to his face to force the issue, but he was a little quicker, always pulling back in time to keep the touch barely perceptible. It was driving her to distraction. He let his tongue brush her clit, and she made a noise that most resembled a squeal. She raised her hips toward his mouth, and he moved away. Again, and again he teased her with a whisper of the possible. He pursed his lips and blew a soft stream of cool air directly on her most sensitive spot. Hearing the depth of her groan engorged him, and he groaned.

"Gil, please!"

He just smiled.

He slid a finger inside her, found her G spot and stroked it. She was writhing now. He slipped in a second finger and then a third and used his thumb to summon the blood that rapidly inflamed her clit.

"I want you inside me now, Gil," she said, her voice begging.

"Not yet, Sara."

"I can't wait."

"I don't want you to wait. I want you to come for me while I watch."

She pushed herself up on her elbows so she could see him bring her pleasure. The view pushed her over the edge. She yelled his name, fell back on the bed, arched her back and let the orgasmic shocks transport her for the first time in two months.

**xxxxxxx**

He was torn between watching her face and watching the convulsions of her vagina around his fingers. He let his eyes flick between them. As he felt the tremors begin to subside, he went down on her again, inhaled her musky sex scent and felt his own arousal escalate even more. He used his tongue and lips on her to keep her from fading completely and wasn't quite prepared when she flipped him onto his back and bent to kiss him.

When the kiss ended, she raised up on her knees and reached for her robe. He watched her, but she turned his face back to her.

"Look at me, Gil," she said.

"With pleasure." He smiled, and his eyes filled with renewed lust.

She moved up until she was straddling his face. The vision, the scent, made him gasp. He opened his mouth to caress her with his tongue, and she let him. He was only vaguely aware of it when she reached behind her, clasped his hands and raised them to the headboard. When he felt her binding his wrists to the furniture, he became alarmed.

"Sara?"

"What?"

"What are you doing?"

She moved down over his chest and smiled at him.

"I tied you up. With your own tie."

"I know. That's what worries me."

"Really? Don't you trust me?"

"I-I don't remember."

She smiled again.

"You used to trust me."

"Okay, then."

She bent and kissed him again. When her lips left his, she began an exploration down his body, pausing over some of his worst scars to welcome them to the neighborhood. She spent several minutes with the spot on his left breast and moved from there to his nipple. And then to his right nipple. He watched her closely, every touch thrilling him. As her face moved south, her hands stayed behind to caress, pinch and tease. It became apparent that Sara had one target in mind and wanted to get there as quickly as possible.

When she reached his belt, she undid it and tossed it aside. She undid the clasp at the waist of his slacks. She took the slide on his zipper and pressed down on it slightly, so when she lowered it with agonizing slowness, it grazed the length of his erection.

"Oh, my God," he whispered. He lifted his hips a little to give her room to get rid of the slacks and then waited, taking instruction from her moves. She lowered her mouth to the waist of his boxers and inserted her tongue under the elastic, searching out is navel. She dipped her tongue into it and he groaned. With her tongue still probing, she slid her hands under the waistband and lifted his shorts over his erection.

"I've missed this," she said. He had raised his head to watch her and felt himself continuing to escalate. He saw her bend to tongue his balls. She lapped them and then sucked on them, and he began to writhe under her.

After a few moments, she raised her face and smiled. She was holding the sash to her robe. She looped it over him, to the base of his erection, and pulled it just tight enough to constrict the urethra without causing pain. Then she began working over the head of his cock with her tongue, as if it were an ice cream cone. His breathing came faster. He felt perspiration on his face and chest. When Sara slid her lips down the length of him, his hips bucked and he had to will himself to hold back. He tried reaching for her hair and remembered he was bound. He didn't want to come in her mouth. He wanted to be inside her.

"Don't worry," she said. "Let go. You won't come. I won't let you."

She descended on him again, taking him all the way down her throat. His hips bucked again. And again. He couldn't help it. She was using her lips and her tongue to drive him to an orgasm, and it was working. And working. And working. He could feel the pressure building in his balls and his brain. As he watched her, she pumped him faster and harder, and when he couldn't take any more, he let his head drop back, and he nearly screamed. And when he looked up, she was still pumping him with her mouth, not even slowing for breath.

He was desperate for release, poised right there on the edge of it, but physically unable to make the leap. The pressure of the sash garrote kept his urethra closed, the orgasms building and building behind the dam.

"Dear God, Sara, you're killing me."

She just kept pumping, and his balls kept constricting, and his hips kept bucking, and the pressure kept growing, and, finally, he did scream.

She quickly tossed the sash aside and mounted him, very much on the cusp of her own orgasm. When leaned down to kiss him lightly she reached up and released his hands. She raised up to her knees again and created a steady rhythm with him that wouldn't let either of them last.

He took her waist and flipped her onto her back, rocking up on top of her in one smooth maneuver that maintained their coupling and their rhythm. He pulled her legs over his shoulders and began slamming into her so far and so hard he felt his balls slap her ass.

"Now, please," she begged.

And that did it. He felt her spasms begin, which triggered his. He reached between them and found her clit and began massaging it to keep her orgasms going for as long as his lasted. Wave after wave of pleasure hammered their bodies, rocking them again and again and, eventually, draining them completely. When the orgasms began to subside, they had no energy to do anything but lie there, him on top of her. A sweat sandwich.

As long as any of him remained within her, neither wanted it to end.

Finally, it had to, and he rolled off. Both of them lay still, on their backs amid a jumble of damp sheets.

**xxxxxxx**

Sara waited for him to say something, anything. But he was silent. She wondered bitterly if he had simply fallen asleep. That wasn't the way their lovemaking normally ended. He wasn't holding her. She longed for him to hold her.

The sex had been wonderfully satisfying, mind-blowing in fact, and she knew she should have been grateful enough for that. He made all the right moves, touched her exactly as she loved to be touched. But his silence now spoke volumes. She rubbed the tears from her eyes. She hadn't thought of it when he asked her at dinner, but the difference between having sex and making love was the difference between knowing what to do and feeling the passion for doing it. Tonight, they "had sex." Because he couldn't remember her, he couldn't love her. And if he couldn't love her, he couldn't make love to her.

What had Grissom said about that once? "Sex without love is pointless. It makes you sad."

He was right.

She was sad.

They had gotten the physical release they both needed. That was about all. She had hoped for so much more.

She turned on her side, away from him, knowing she would cry herself to sleep and hoping he wouldn't know. He didn't deserve the pain it would cause him.

Then she felt the mattress move, felt his arms reach out to her, gather her in and pull her to him, her back to his chest, her head on his left arm, just like they used to do it. He wrapped his arms around her and held tight.

She held her breath.

He lifted her hair off the back of her neck and kissed her lightly there. She shuddered. He put his cheek against her head, so his mouth was just behind her right ear.

"Maybe when we wake up," he said, "we could try that shower thing again."

Her eyes went wide and she heard herself gasp. She rolled over to face him, and her hands went to his face.

He was smiling, and there was no mistaking the love she saw in his eyes.

"Gil…?" she said. She didn't need to finish the question.

"Hi, Honey. I'm home."

10


	13. Chapter 13

**A/N: **Not another chapter, but a note to thank two people who really helped on this story. First to MSCSIFANGSR for her beta read of the opening chapter and a suggestion that led to lots of good things, and to csiKathy, whose medical background helped me fix one error and confirm I had it all right in another location. It's a better story for both of you.

I guess I probably should mention I own CSI. All of it. It's mine. Oh, wait, nuts. Never mind. My check must have bounced.

j


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